When the Last Leaves Home

Boston Herald

Everything until now has been a dress rehearsal - kindergarten, first grade, middle school, high school, even that month away last summer.

It was all play. At the end of the day, at the end of the month, my youngest child would always come home to me. She'd race in the front door, drop her books on the floor and yell, "Mom! I'm home," then go looking for me.

We'd sit and talk then, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for longer. But always there was conversation, shared moments. How was your day? Who said what to whom? Small stuff. But all that small stuff connected us.

There won't be this anymore. No more anticipated intermission in the middle of the day; no more long talks at night; no more cups of tea; no more "Will you make pancakes?" And no more "Mom, come here. I need you."

She's going off to college in a few days. She's packing even now. She opens her bedroom door and music drifts downstairs, show music, loud, upbeat, tap-dancing tunes that have always made me happy, always made me want to sing and dance, too.

But not today. Even Ethel Merman belting her heart out can't chase away my blues. The child I thought would stay a child forever is upstairs emptying her dresser drawers and I am downstairs in my office wondering what I am going to do for the rest of my life without her.

I see what was and I see what will be, and I want to go back, not ahead. I want to shop for plaid dresses and matching ribbons and pencil boxes with Pocahontas on them and notebooks with suns and stars.

I want to buy bologna and Doritos and Ring Dings, kid food that no one over 12 eats, and pack a lunch and put a note in the middle of a sandwich (Guess who misses you!) and hear my daughter giggle when she comes home to say she bit right into the note and it was gross! I want to know when it's 3:10 p.m. that she'll walk in the door.

But this won't happen because there is no going back. My daughter isn't a child anymore. She's a young woman, and it's time that she leave home. It's good that she's going to New York, and it's wonderful that she knows what she wants to do, and I am so proud of her and so happy for her.

But I am so incredibly sad for me.

I have no business being sad. She isn't running away. It's not as if I am never going to see her again. New York is close. She can come home anytime. I can drive there. She'll have a phone in her room and we can talk every day. Besides, she'll be home almost as many days as she's away - long weekends, breaks, months of vacation. I know this. I've been down this road twice before.

But I didn't like it then, and I like it less now. First the oldest left for school and it was just 40 minutes away and everyone said, "He's so close. It doesn't even count." But it counted. I thought my heart would break and life would never be the same. And it did break a little and life wasn't the same. But there were still two other kids at home.

Then the next went off to college (a 2 1/2 hour drive this time) and it was worse the second time around. We talked on the phone every day, sometimes twice a day, but still I missed her.

Now the last child is leaving, and I listen to the music she plays that always fills the house and I am afraid suddenly, of days without her, of walking past her room and finding no one there.

"You'll adjust. You'll adapt," everyone says. "Now you'll be able to do what you want to do."

But what I want to do is walk upstairs and find them all there, small again. What I want is what I had: noise and chaos and laughter, the sound of children growing up. What I want is for the last of them to be 12 again, getting ready for middle school, not college, years not days away from leaving home.