If you want to experience true, stomach-churning, dry-mouth, muscle-ticcing, neck-aching stress, to argue bitterly with someone you normally hug, to feel about clean, quiet hotel rooms the way people feel about crowded cells in country jails, try this: Accompany your high-school senior to audition for a musical theatre program.

See twenty-eight talented teens beautifully coiffed and looking as though they carry red carpets with them wherever they go. Hear them warming up, sounding like Kristin Cheoweth and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Hear them play Chopin's Revolutionary Etude while your child plunks out 'The Circle of Life.'

Learn that of these twenty-eight kids, approximately one-third of one kid will be asked to enter the program, as there have been six audition dates before this one and five more to follow -- and the program is accepting four students of each gender.

Wonder about that advice you gave so freely, about following your heart, and see why your own circle of life might devour your tail.

Talk up the benefits of a career in cosmetic dentistry.

Offer green tea and sympathy. Wonder about giving pinot noir to a minor.

Talk to other mothers -- all wearing rings that cost more than your car -- about the seven colleges competing to give their sons and daughters full-ride scholarships.

Realize the truth that while there are nursing shortages and teaching shortages and even air-traffic controller shortages, there have never been nor will there ever be actor shortages.

See your child emerge from the audition hall. Ask questions. Get answers in the kind of monosyllables your child hasn't used since fourth grade.

Suffer.

Pray.

Bargain with fate -- your career for this career, your molar for this career, all your molars for... realize this is magical thinking.

Wonder if you know anyone famous.

Ride or fly home in silence, interrupted only by the blistering argument that erupts five minutes before you greet the rest of the family.

Wait for the mail carrier.

Bribe the mail carrier.

Check to see if the telephone is working more times than you have since you were sixteen and wondering if that guy really would call.

Check the website online and note that all the mothers with rings the size of your car now have sons and daughters who have received acceptance letters and full scholarships to twenty schools.

Realize you couldn't afford this anyhow.

Debate the moral rectitude of opening another person's mail.

Talk up the benefits of a career as a representative for professional athletes.

Wait until April, and not for taxes.

Hear your kid hit that high note for the first time.

Wish you could preserve that note under glass.

Wonder what's so darned hot about "the arts" anyhow.

Hope.

with best love,

Jackie M.