I didn’t realize I was on the Going to College flight until the telltale smell began to diffuse through the pressurized air: nori and nostalgia and the pungent sizzle of nerves, like ozone from lightning in a summer storm.

Oh, of course. A Hawaiian Airlines flight to LAX in mid-August is carrying island kids on their way to UCLA and USC, Chapman and Redlands, Pomona, Pepperdine, Santa Clara, Occidental and other esteemed colleges. They carry the other things, too — favorite stuffed animals from childhood, pictures of the family dog, the tangle of parental worries that go back 18 years, every late night sweating over homework or crying over a grade, and that Marcus Mariota-esque grade school essay that first spelled out the dream. All of that is there, along with Na Leo music from the in-flight entertainment and the compassionate flight attendants who have seen their share of nervous college freshmen through this momentous step.

One student actually unwrapped her furikake- and-Spam musubi before the plane even took off. She ate it slowly, like a last meal, as she read an oversize card that was marked, “Do Not Open Until You Get On The Plane!!!” I watched her. She didn’t cry; but I couldn’t bear to look at her mother, who sat hugging the plastic container of Hawaii snacks to her chest.

Last year, according to data from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, 3,562 students from Hawaii left to start their freshman year in mainland colleges.

Kids from Hawaii have packed their cold-weather clothes and their beaming ambition and headed out to college on the mainland since the days of the SS Lurline. Back then parents waved goodbye from the dock knowing that it would be weeks before a letter arrived and possibly years before their child came home grown and graduated. Now the whole family — even grandma and grandpa — comes along for the trip. They stay in a hotel near campus, make shopping trips to Target to buy matchy dorm decor and stock up on pallets of ramen and mac-and-cheese to heat up in unsanctioned dorm microwaves. The tearful goodbyes happen not on the docks (or at the airport boarding gate, as in my era), but later, at the very last minute, on campus after a huge family meal with the new roommate, the new roommate’s family and anybody else from Hawaii who ended up at the same university.

Goodbyes are so different now. High school friends can text each other until the plane pushes off from the gate and can resume the conversation as soon as the wheels touch down in LAX or SFO or farther east. Nobody has to jockey for time on the one shared phone on the dorm floor. Students can text mom from class.

Still, this particular goodbye is tender — the fledgling’s first solo flight, even though the entire family is there on the plane; the flight attendants, like mentors, giving out extra bags of pretzel mix and words of encouragement.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.