By Sam Allis, 6/13/2004

The college graduation season that, I swear, began after Valentine's Day is winding down. Last week, Harvard dispatched its little so-and-so's into the Big Swarm.

The hell with them. Let us now praise parents.

You know parents, the ones at diploma time with bags under their eyes and varicose veins. The ones with the digital cameras who remember the umbrella and grapple with parking. The studies in stillness amid the madhouse of folding chairs and tents and earnest blather. The survivors who wear on their faces the campaign ribbons of pride, relief, and exhaustion.

Let us praise those who take the best shots that college billing offices have to give, shudder and keep on coming. Who absorb news of campus suicides, AIDS, drug and alcohol escapades over morning coffee and go off to work. Who wonder in commuting traffic if the world will be nice to their kids.

(Imagine if all children on graduation day were required to sign a document that legally binds them to care for their parents in their dotage.)

But then the overpriced offspring may end up selling Sno-Cones at a 7-Eleven. Who cares? The day after graduation is the first day of the rest of their lives, not ours. It's time for parents to bring the focus back where it belongs -- on them. The macaroni-and-cheese phase of their lives is over. Assuming they're still solvent, they start contemplating that long-delayed rental in Tuscany or that inexcusable new car.

And what about that new drug in the mysterious TV ad showing a man and woman of a certain age holding hands in dueling hot tubs at sunset? It has to do, it turns out, with erectile dysfuction, not athlete's foot. (My friend Charley tells me that the French, bless them, have already named the drug ''le weekend" for its 36-hour effect.)

That said, there have been no sightings of parents running naked with glee through our streets this spring after paying their last tuition bill. No champagne breakfasts. Maybe it was the heat, but the glazed look in the eyes of Harvard parents last week seemed closer to that of a fighter who has survived 15 rounds but can no longer stand.

Rhonda Klimczak regards her son, Ryan, and cuts to the chase: ''You are a very expensive child."

Indeed. Harvard, where Ryan has thrived in the bloodcurdling major of biochemistry, ran north of $40,000 last year for full freight, books, a little beer money, and plane fare home for vacations.

Even with financial aid -- two-thirds of Harvard undergraduates get something -- the burden has been major for Klimczak, an auditor, and her husband, Robert, a mortician, from Arlington Heights, Ill.

Ryan is the last of three Klimczak children to finish college. The Klimczaks are proud of this accomplishment, yet any relief from college bills, which carry the punch of IRS missives, is tempered by the energy consumed in the effort.

''After three kids, there's no money left," says Rhonda. ''They keep sending me financial aid forms. I just throw them away now. All I can say is that we're not going to go further in debt. We'll be paying the loans off for the next 10 years like a mortgage."

And there's often more to come. Pity Eileen and John Stork, neonatal physician and pediatric anesthesiologist respectively from Cleveland, whose daughter, Caitlin, also graduated last week and is off to medical school in the fall. (The Observer rarely has sympathy for physicians, who complain about managed care but still do far better than most of us.)

''We've got two more," says John Stork in something between a monotone and a groan. A 17-year-old and an 8-year-old. He and his wife have just paid off their own education debts in the last five years, and his malpractice insurance tripled last year.

Paul Sauser, a contractor from DeKalb, Ill., feels his pain. Sauser's daughter, Kori, leaves Harvard for medical school at the University of Southern California. Dad's looking at about $40,000 a year there with everything included.

Chump change. Her older sister is at med school at Northwestern, which totals about $60,000 a year. And don't forget little Joe, who's 6.

''We are now free of our opportunity as parents to write checks to Harvard," says Sauser, choosing his words carefully.

Maureen Donovan of Lido Beach, Long Island and her husband have been writing checks for three kids to various institutions for 15 years, including the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine. (How steep was that? ''Oh, please!")

Some keep paying. ''Then there's the first and last month's rent check and no toaster oven," says Karen Griffith.

And health insurance. If the kids don't have it, she adds, ''You get the bill."

Consider, on the other hand, the case of Brian White, who graduated summa cum laude in physics and has earned a free ride at the MD-PhD program at Washington University in St. Louis. His father adds with delight that Brian also got a $10,000 signing bonus simply for going there.

Back on planet earth, Elise and Riccardo Keel, who both teach at Boston public schools, contemplate the future as their daughter Amy graduates.

''We'll be paying these loans off until we die," says Elise.

''It's worth it," adds Riccardo, pausing ever so slightly, ''I guess."

Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com.

This story ran on page A2 of the Boston Globe on 6/13/2004. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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