This week the kids are off from school for spring break and Sophia is in Maine as a houseguest of one of her friends   With her gone and all of the other kids still here, it feels like a prelude to how it will feel when she goes off to college next year, an event that I suspect will be much harder on me than it will be on her.

She took the red eye  Sunday night, and aside from my Monday morning text to her to make sure she landed safely, I have resisted the impulse to call/text her with my usual barrage of questions: “How’s the weather? What are you doing today? Had any lobster?”

Sophia and I have always been very close and now that she is a young adult (almost 18) our conversations have evolved to center on more mature topics like politics and current events. There’s been some doozies in the news lately l and I felt a palpable void when I could not go into her room to discuss them with her. I reached for my phone many times to call her and stopped myself. I need to learn to let her be, I rationalized. She’s on her own and I have to let go. She doesn’t need her mother hassling her with intrusive questions. And then… last night around midnight (EST) I got the following text:

“Mom, I visited the first L.L. Bean store EVER. There’s still snow on the ground. I went to a Jewish Passover dinner. It was fun!”

She was thinking about me too. I beamed with joy.