Letting go.....again.

She had been sitting on the stairs when she began to cry. She told me later it had come with no warning. She was a little embarrassed and her eyes were moist as we talked. We had spent the first few weeks of school assuring young moms that their little ones would be okay. One of my moms had dabbed at her own tears as we met on the first day and she entrusted her three-year-old son to my care. Another reluctantly left her second-grader in a room full of strangers and with a teacher she barely knew.

We were used to brave dads who attempted to hide their nervousness by joking with their children as they dropped them off in the morning. We had become accustomed to anxious moms who lingered at the classroom door and returned a few minutes later hoping to catch a glimpse of a successfully separated preschooler. We, ourselves, had been through it and confidently guaranteed these relatively new parents that at the end of the day we would return happy, smiling children to them.

So, when my tearful friend and I had our conversation it became apparent that we were no different. My friend confided in me that since her son had left for college she missed him terribly. She was frustrated when she called and he wasn't in his room when she thought he might be. Where was he? Who was he with? We both laughed.

I told her my college student had called home sick. I told her to go to the infirmary. "Mom!" she gasped. "They give you medicine that makes you worse!" I told her, yeah, that was the same college infirmary I remembered. Go anyway. I had hung up the phone thinking of piles of family quilts, homemade chicken soup and a couple of drugstore "while you wait for the prescription" videos. This time she would have to comfort herself, fix her own soup and take medicine that makes you worse - 400 miles from home.

I remembered being told that the homesick phone calls, the sick phone calls and the "i'm overwhelmed" phone calls would cause me to lose sleep, make me sad and cause me to wonder if community college weren't the answer after all. Then, after 24 or 48 hours of worry, a remarkably cheerful phone call would erase all previous cares and concerns. And, much like the young mom who separates from a tearful preschooler, watches the clock until carpool time and then sees a happy child bounce into the car at the end of the school day, I realize that all is well and will be well.

My friend and I are lucky to have each other. We try to laugh about the fact that she doesn't have to hide the food from him anymore and I don't have to share makeup and jewelry anymore and we recognize there are benefits. And I tell her that her son won't always be out of the dorm when she calls and she tells me that maybe my daughter will live in spite of the infirmary.

But there is this crack in the bottom of the marble basin in her bathroom....a crack that appeared after years of her sitting ON the counter putting on makeup or peering into the mirror at the occasional breakouts on her adolescent face. Now that she's gone, we could repair the crack.

Could. But won't.