The Home Stretch

Katie will be home from Tucson on Friday. We've missed her and her noise and her mess and her hundreds of outfits and pillbox hats. Sage has missed her most of all. She's so lonely for Katie that she actually put her head on Carrie's knee, which astounded us both. Sage is a one-woman dog. Maybe she was confused.

I'm beginning to think of this as practice for being an empty-nester. Katie's a high school senior this year, and she'll be going to college next year: locally if we have a say in it, and at the U. of Bora Bora if she has her way. I'm hearing an underlying desire for distance...

I'm getting better at this. The first couple of summers she spent in Tucson I was about as out-of-sorts as Sage. I hadn't lived in a kid-free home in more than 20 years, and I was a little bereft. This summer I handled it like a champ. I think I'm ready for the Big Moment...when she leaves to go to school and we're officially childless.

My friend Joyce just sent her last child to college and celebrated by walking down the hall to the shower naked. In the daytime. A thing she hasn't done in 25 years. I can totally relate. I think we sneak around more to have sex in our 40s and 50s than we did as teenagers. Imagine being able to do the deed with the bedroom door open. It boggles the imagination!

So Friday she comes home. Monday she starts Band Camp. A week later she starts her Senior year, nine months after that she'll graduate, and a year from now my 23 year long experiment in parenting will be over. At least for a moment, and unless they come back.

Joyce cried when Adam left for school, but then she healed enough the next day to get naked in her own hallway. Joyce is an inspiration to me.