The real packing hasn't begun in earnest yet, but the pile of stuff in the piano room is starting to grow as it does every year around this time. I'm not sure that sending a child off to college at the end of the summer is any easier now than it was seven years ago when we did it for the first time, but I guess I've finally gotten somewhat used to it. This doesn't stop me from feeling sad each time I pass through the piano room and see textbooks and dishes and laundry detergent waiting to be loaded into the van. It also doesn't eliminate the tension I feel between yearning to hold on and needing to let go. And, of course, I'm well aware of how empty and quiet the house is going to feel Thursday night. But watching my children go and come back repeatedly over the past several years has built up a kind of resilience in me that I didn't feel when this whole process started. With our youngest child heading into her junior year, we are nearing the end of the path we started seven years ago, and I suspect I am going to need every bit of that resilience as we face the next step: life after the college years.
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