Letting go

For years my mother warned me. “Before you know it,” she’d say, “they’ll be off and away.” But I never believed her. How could I? My kids were in the middle of everything, of the everything that was my life. For twenty years it felt natural to drop everything when the school nurse called, when my kids wanted driving lessons, when an open-ended conversation in the hall needed more time.

Just like her brother, like a trout ready to spawn, jumping the rapids, my