PenPenWrites

We've all had an Aha! moment–the little epiphany that tells us, it's time to let go of the controls, that our children are adults and it's time to treat them that way. For me, it was when Alpha daughter came home from college for the summer of her junior year. She asked if I was excited about a vacation I was planning–a hiking trip in Corsica. I would be, I told her, except that I couldn't think about it: I had so much to take care of to get her brother and her ready to go back to school. "If you did a little less," she told me, "and we did a little more, we'd both be happier."

I thought about that moment when a friend from my own college days sent an email commenting on control issues and adding one from her own experience. "My son," she wrote, "had been married almost a year before it dawned on me that I should no longer buy his underpants."

Aha!