An Empty Nest Launches Both a Mom and Daughter

My daughter’s pack of friends from high school is dwindling each day. The tide ebbs, with one or another of the group packing their extra-long sheets, new computers, lists of e-mail addresses. Off to college, they are going.

The UC-bound students pace restlessly, working extra shifts at their part-time jobs. They gather at the college-launch parties for their friends, watching their flotilla of private school pals drift away one by one, all the while waiting for their turn to leave. UC does not start until Sept. 25. It’s a time warp.

My daughter, UCLA-bound, has dinner with a UC Santa Cruz family. The girls have been friends since the second grade. Not surprisingly, they discover they have bought the same style extra-long twin sheets. Anyone attempting to buy that style now, they agree, is surely out of luck. Department stores may still have some ugly ones; they aren’t sure if even those are left on the picked-over shelves.

The remaining local students, attending an Orange County community college or Cal State Long Beach, have started school. My daughter’s best friend leaves for Brown tomorrow. Today is their marathon: a makeover in South Coast Plaza, a drive for brunch in Laguna, a final kickbox workout at the gym.

“I might not come home at all, Mom,” says Ms. UCLA. “We’re going to a movie, then to a coffeehouse and then I’m going to LAX to see her off in the morning.” The implicit message is that in a few weeks I will not even know if she stays out all night.

Seeing my look, she grudgingly turns on her cell phone. “I wish I were starting school this week,” she says. She perks up when the mail brings news of her roommate. They talk on the phone. “She seems a lot like me,” she says. They make plans for coffee.

Meanwhile, I attempt to find some hobbies besides mothering. Thankfully, my own work starts again this week. I can be a school counselor, and only mope around part of the day.

I look in the local paper. I make lists of things to do. A running club, Toastmasters, swim team, Greyhound rescue mission, bicycle club. Maybe. I take a first step. I start a journal. I pull out my plot for a mystery novel set in a high school. The protagonist? Someone like me.

Like my daughter, I am being launched.