One Year Out

This blog post, from The Choice in the NY Times, is for all you parents who are a year out from sending your own children off to college. 

Normally, I’m O.K. about saying goodbye. Just this summer, when the bugle sounded, announcing an end to parent’s visiting day at my son’s sleep-away camp, it was a hug, a kiss and “See you in three weeks. Love you.”

While I didn’t much miss the sound of video games streaming from our basement, the tennis balls pounding against the garage door, and the baseball mitt taking up space on the kitchen counter, I knew — and loved — the fact that those trivial annoyances would be back come mid-August.

But a child’s leaving for college is a goodbye of different proportions. Of course she’ll come home for vacations and maybe summers, too. Of course, her room will remain intact with its photos, yearbooks, etc., so it’ll feel like she still lives there. But does she? I’m not so sure it’ll ever feel quite the same.