If I wrote Isabel's college application essay

Originally published 2/13/17

Vanderbilt admissions office has 34 full time employees and 20 seasonal readers to comb through the 31000 applications that they read fully to fill the 1600 seats they have available for freshmen each year. I'm going to say I believe them just because I really want Isabel to go there. I mean, Isabel really wants to go there. They read not only the numbers and the test scores and the GPAs and the fill-in-the-blank questions, but multiple recommendations and essays. Vanderbilt requires 3 recommendations and an essay while Davidson, which admits about half as many, requires the personal essay and 4 recommendations, one of which must come from a friend! Recommendations are likely easy (though the Vandy admissions guy did advise that you ask a teacher who likes you to write it, which means some dude asked a teacher who didn't like him) and cookie cutter. It's the personal essay that is a stumper. Instruction isn't specific, although the stress put on it is clear. Tell your story, about who you are, how you got to be that person, and what makes you tick. It's not a resume, it's a story, about you. Tell a story about you and who you are. "I don't even know who I am," Isabel complained on the way home from Davidson. What 17-year-old does? So I got to thinking about Isabel, and who she is, and what story would define her. Here's what I would write. Isabel was 3 when her dad and I separated. So the only life she has ever known of her parents is them living separately. Growing up, she spent almost equal time between her dad and me, so she learned early to think about where she would be at night, and to take inventory of what she would need when she got there. Some weeks she was in between homes every other night, and never complained once. Isabel was 8 1/2 when I met Michael. Having had her mother all to herself for all her known life up to that point, she gave him the fisheye, for sure. I had dated a little, but never introduced Isabel to anyone. I don't think a kid should think of their mom as "dating" someone. That's just weird. Your mom is your mom. She doesn't date. Especially when you're little.

Me and Iz when I was not dating. Circa July 2006.

But I knew very early that Michael was going to be in our lives for a very long time. And, he went to church with us. So an early introduction was feasible, if not a little covert. When I met Michael, he was just exiting a 20-year marriage, complete with three teenagers. That man was a mess. His family was a mess. I mean, anyone is in that situation. No one is not messy at the end of a 20-year marriage. At the end of any marriage. When you divorce, you have to reinterpret and redefine yourself. You are no longer married to someone, which significantly changes not only how you see yourself, but who you actually are, and how you interact with other people, including the person you used to be married to. The marriage has dissolved but, especially when there are children involved, you have to continue to deal with the other parent, although in a totally different manner. It's really weird. And, remembering that the marriage has dissolved, you still had an intimate relationship (physically and emotionally) with that person, and you now have to shelve that, and engage with that person as if they were someone else, but they're still the parent of the children you made together. Like I said, it's really weird. So I met Michael, and he's in this whirlwind of emotion and discovery and legality and, just simply, a hot mess. But I saw something in there that I knew was meant for me. How, I don't remember. I'm getting to Isabel. She didn't know all this. She didn't know either that I was despondent over my inability to find a nice man who didn't live with his mother, drink alcohol, or have as a serious career goal to become a rock star. I mean, what is the deal with middle-aged men? Why couldn't I find a nice Christian man who knew what it meant to be a parent? I did find him, Michael Cannon, but our timing was not perfect. Here he was, one pew behind me, dad of three kids, but a bit of a hot mess. I took my chances. Our early courtship was rocky, as he worked out the kinks of being divorced dad. I had to have some choice words with him, and had to provide unbiased guidance on the occasional issue. There came a moment though, when I thought it was over, and we weren't going to be able to work it out. This is where Isabel comes in.

Isabel at 9, taken at the beach.

Isabel has always sat with me in church. I think children's church is ridiculous. I don't mean to offend, and I understand the logistical advantages of children being somewhere else in church, but Isabel has never gone to children's church. She didn't even ask. But this particular Sunday, she must have been 9, she was in children's church. Which means, at St. Peter's that they started in a separate room and came to big church during the Peace, right before communion. They missed the readings and the sermon, the hardest part for most of us to sit through. I don't remember what had happened between Michael and I, but I was heartbroken. So as church and the lessons and the sermon went on, I began to cry. Michael wasn't there. I don't remember where he was either. So I'm in church, by myself, crying. And I don't mean a sniffle, wipe and deep breath kind of crying, I mean big crocodile tears, snotty nose and hiccups. Yes, in the middle of church. I'm trying to compose myself by singing, reading or looking out the frosty windows, but nothing is working. And it's getting close to the Peace, which means Isabel will be in soon, and I know that she absolutely cannot see me like this. I mean, moms can't cry in front of 9-year-olds. So I leave church, get a drink of water. Wash my face, walk around the narthex (that's the lobby). I kinda get a hold of myself. I think I'm ok. I go back into church. Into the house of God, where He is, where He really is, where we always feel closest to Him. In a church where I am director of Youth Ministries and Sunday School and where so many people love me and are rooting for my happiness. And I break down again. Who can not cry in the middle of that? It's the Peace, where, after having confessed our sins, Episcopalians reluctantly shake the hands of everyone around them, or at least everyone they can't avoid. And, when the children are returned to their parents from children's church. Isabel slides into the pew next to me. I am sucking it up, looking straight ahead to avoid any eye contact with her precious strawberry hair self, holding my eyes as wide open as I can to dry the tears and sniffling the snot as unobtrusively as possible. I cannot stop the tears, and I wipe one away, furtively. Isabel looks at me. "Why are you crying, mom?" she whispers. I can't even look at her. I pretend like it's really important to look at the altar. "I'm not crying." Liar. That should be the end of the conversation. Don't you believe everything your mom says? I sniff again. "Mom, why are you crying?" still whispering, Isabel does not believe me, nor does she give up. "I'm not crying, honey." Really. Didn't I already say that? How can she not believe me? I am determined to be strong mama. Hear me roar. Through my snotty nose. Isabel looks ahead. Sighs. Steps up onto the pew and looks at me directly. "Mom. Why are you crying?" she says out loud. Dammit. I can't hold it in any longer, and I let a big tear slide down my cheek. Honesty is the best policy. Isabel probably knows more about her mom than most kids do. "Michael and I are having a hard time," I told her. "And it just makes me really sad." Isabel's shoulder's softened, and she put her arms around me. "Mom. God loves you. And God has a plan for you." And then I was really crying. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Jeremiah 29:11

Isabel knew that. I did not.

The summer before, I had admitted to God that my plans sucked. And that how I was trying to direct my life was not working. Most things were good, but me thinking that I'm really in charge and that I can find a suitable partner and live my life the way I want to was not working out well. Then I had met Michael, and I thought God gave him to me. And at that moment I was having a conversation with God about why this wasn't turning out the way I thought it should. (We do know the end of the story here - or the middle anyway - but at that moment I didn't think it was going well.) I am not insinuating that God listened to me, but he saw Michael and I through a necessary struggle to get us here today, together. Isabel isn't an overly religious kid, even more not so because she lives in a place they call the Holy Mountain, and because she goes to an Episcopal school, and because her mom and step-dad drag her to church every Sunday. Actually, she'll tell you right now that she's agnostic, that she doesn't believe in God. (I'm ok with that; she's 17... and read the above story again and tell me what you think.) Isabel is what I would call an old soul, and she sees things that other people don't see. Right now, at 17, she does have a hard time seeing beyond herself, but I still see in the way she treats her friends, her parents and her grandparents that she knows how to live beyond herself. Even as a 9 year old, she persisted in addressing someone else's pain, then in comforting it with words that she could have heard in children's church that morning, but that she knew exactly what they meant, and how to use them. (She also knew how to say "What the hell" in context when she was 5 years old, but I'm gonna blame that on her friend's mother who was very liberal with the curse words at Brownie meetings.) Some may criticize and say that's not her job; that it was my job as mom and the adult to comfort and shield her. But I've never shielded Isabel from reality. I have not made her responsible for it, but I have not hidden her from my alcoholism, my mistakes, my triumphs or my joys, nor from those of the world - the temptations of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, as it were. We speak honestly and openly about the temptations of a nearby University that tolerates excessive partying, and about what a teenage boy thinks about (two things: I'm hungry, and sex). She rolls her eyes and feigns embarrassment, but I watch her choices and it's clear what values she has adopted.

This is the very day I started to talk with Isabel about alcoholism, and when I told her alcohol made me sick. Kindergarten. Thank you, Red Ribbon week.

She didn't take no for an answer. She stood on my level. She saw through the lie. She persisted for the truth. She empathized with pain. She spoke loving words. She wrapped her arms around me. She comforted me. That is who Isabel Spinelli is. And just because you have to be smart to get into Vanderbilt, when Isabel was 4 or so we were reviewing letters and words. "What's a word that begins with I, Isabel?" She looked at me. I tried to help her out: "What word starts with I, Isabel?" She thought a minute. "Improvisation?" "Yes." I nodded my head. Ever the mom, "Is there another word, Isabel, that begins with I?" "Intelligent?" "Yes." And just for good measure, "Isabel, what other word begins with I?" She finally got it. "Isabel!!!" That's what kind of student Vanderbilt or Davidson or any school would be lucky to have.