PenPenWrites

parenting blog, memoir notes, family punchlines & more

recent posts

© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

recent posts

© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

Category: pain of saying goodbye

  • Empty Nesting: The college dropoff blues

    The college dropoff (freshman year version in particular) is a rite of passage as tearful as sending our firstborn to kindergarten and laden with plenty of meaning. Our kids are transitioning from the cosseted safety of home to the independence of young adult life. We're transitioning from controlling parents to advisory ones. In the moment…

  • The Pain of Parting: Lessons in Letting Go

    Our son sent his oldest child back to college and his oldest daughter off to Roma for a gap year of study abroad. He still has one child at home but his heart is aching. As his two eldest headed off, he managed, he tells me, not to tear up in front of them. He…

  • Young Adults: What if they call home from college and they’re miserable.

    Photo: Palo Coleman They're off to college. The empty nest looms or maybe just the diminution of the number of children at home. Paterfamilias and I have been there, lived through that. Now it's one of our grown-up children whose oldest child has bounded off happily for college. So maybe this is as good a…

  • What it feels like to send your first born off to college

    I will not name names. But this was a Facebook post written by a dad I know who drove his oldest child–his son, who happens to be my grandson–to college a few days ago and managed to keep those lump-in-throat emotions in check–for a while: And for those who are asking the obvious question, by…

  • Family Visits: Saying Goodbye Is the Hardest Part

    A friend recently returned from Denmark where she spent 10 days with her daughter and granddaughter who've lived outside Copenhagen for nearly 17 years. It was a pleasant visit, she reports. She saw her granddaughter act in a play, and the three of them went to Amsterdam for a look at the tulips. She and…