A whole year?

They're leaving home

Chloe's friend has foiled my plot to be nowhere near any of them when they leave each other for college. We use Chloe's departure for Spain as a cold, hard touchstone: nothing will ever be as bad as that day. It's been almost two years and I still can't describe to anyone that morning on the ferry when Chloe's two best friends walked off the boat to go to school while Chloe stayed behind to go to the airport. Even that was almost more than I could write.

Chloe's friend leaves for Bennington on Wednesday and Chloe asked if we could take them to the airport. Of course we can. Oh, crap. That means I'll be there when she leaves her best friend that she's had an otherworldly connection with since the first time they saw each other when they were two years old. No, I won't. I'll be in the car. At the other end of the airport reading headlines from the newspaper stand. Wandering the parking garage looking at cars. Inspecting the garbage cans for freshly discarded, still-usable gels and liquids. I'll be there to pick up the pieces, but I will not be there to witness Chloe say goodbye to her best friend and to the life they've known and loved so far. Or to watch her friend's mother, a good friend of mine who is not at all looking forward to her daughter's departure, watch them leave each other. A while ago - we might have had a glass or six of wine - we were talking about this day and I mentioned that Chloe had spontaneously said, "I'm going to have such a great life! Aren't you excited for me?" and we both cried. I'm staying away so as to not contribute to that volatile combination. Sure, exciting things are on the horizon. But the horizon is out there somewhere and in the moment it doesn't mitigate the profound sadness of leaving each other while wondering if anything will ever be the same again.

It will be a lot easier this time

"We've done this before." That's been said a lot recently, in relation to Chloe leaving for college. She'll be only a few hours away so it will be nothing like waving goodbye to a barely-16-year-old who is going half-way around the world to live for a year with strangers who speak a language she doesn't know. She doesn't understand, and I haven't mentioned yet, that it's not her that I'm worried about when she leaves for college. For her, it's an exciting beginning. For us, it's an end to the biggest part of our lives so far. I can't help but think about people who complain about their parents, who roll their eyes and worry about what to do when their parents come to visit, who can't wait until they leave. Will our kids ever say to their friends, "Oh, crap! My parents are coming next week."?

We think about one of Chloe's friends who will be going to the opposite coast to school, a friend who has never been away from the home she loves, and how hard it's going to be for her and her family to say goodbye. And then we sigh with relief that we won't be going through that again. Chloe's departure for Spain is a touchstone that we revisit to assure ourselves that it won't ever be that hard again.

I'm excited for Chloe to live in a dorm and begin college. She'll be just a few minutes away from her brother. Her dorm room, the one she wanted, is close to the amazing new recreation center that has more equipment than she'll know what to do with ("She said the elliptical machines have DVD players!"). We went to orientation yesterday and, through a series of fortunate events, the door to her dorm room was open. She even stretched out on what will be her bed until I reminded her that she didn't know where those tousled sheets had been, although that might have been an image that would have been better left unpainted.

But my excitement for the next part of Chloe's life doesn't prevent me from getting teary-eyed thinking about driving home alone from her school in about six weeks. Even so, that beats the hell out of what we went through last time.