While traveling to San Diego and San Francisco I am looking through the photos that I had stored on Snapfish. I do feel a little nauseous looking at the pictures of my boy. My beautiful boy. I just looked at the pictures from his last swim meet at Amherst. He and his team were shaved and tapered. He is always in lane 6, and usually a length or two behind his competition. But Joe, he was so proud to have swam four years at Amherst, to be a student athlete, to have his friends from the team. Amherst was such a great experience for him, and the friends he made there fit him.

In his tenth grade year we were in Boston coming home from a weekend trip. Hynek took Kyle and Daniel to the RI shore for the day. Ray, Joseph and I drove across Mass for our first look at a college. I wanted him to see Amherst first, I just had a feeling that it would be a good fit. It was a beautiful summer day, and we got out of the car on the quad and walked over to the steps of the war memorial and looked out over the fields to the hills beyond, and ate lunch. Joseph loved it from the first.

The next year, Ray took him on the college "ski" tour, and Amherst still remained his favorite. Princeton and Bowdoin were the other schools he looked at. He applied early decision to Amherst; we were so nervous. The day the acceptance letter came he was at a Middies swim meet with Daniel for the weekend at Rutgers. I opened the fedex package to a small letter - I called Joseph and read him the acceptance, he was so happy. Of course we should have known that he was in because he told us the week before that he had taken the scholarship exam for the Ancient Greek scholarship at Amherst. Hmmm - first time parents.