My son’s bedroom door is closed again. Music thumps softly behind it, and I stand in the hallway with a laundry basket balanced on my hip, debating whether I should knock. I decide against it.

That’s what life feels like these days—this delicate dance of holding on and letting go.

We’ve entered what I’ve come to call “the leaving year”—that surreal, emotional stretch of months before my firstborn heads off to college. The kitchen calendar, once crowded with football schedules, SAT prep classes, and pickup times for school events, now holds new markers: the deposit deadline, orientation week, and the drop-off day circled in red. Every square is a reminder that the countdown has already begun.

Just last night, I found myself sitting in my car in the driveway, paralyzed for a moment before carrying the groceries inside. My bags were full of all his favorite things—snacks, special cuts of meat, drinks he likes best. I hadn’t even considered the cost. In the store, I was overcome by a strange nostalgia. He’s still here, still under my roof, and yet I was already shopping as though stocking his favorites could somehow slow down the ticking clock. As though a perfectly seared steak might hold back time.

At breakfast, his college sweatshirt—gifted at Christmas—has become a regular part of his wardrobe. He wears it with pride, already stepping into his next identity while still rooted in the one that made him. His phone buzzes constantly, a string of texts about weekend plans intertwined with conversations about potential roommates and dorm layouts. He exists in two worlds now, one foot in high school, one foot already on the college campus. I, meanwhile, remain in just one world—trying to understand what it means to belong less to his future than to his past.

My friends with older children warned me this would happen. “It’s harder on you than on them,” they said knowingly, and they were right. While he looks ahead with excitement, I’m the one lying awake at night, retracing his childhood. Did I teach him enough? Did I prepare him not just for life under this roof, but for life without us? The college counselor reassured me that this maternal panic is normal. “They’re ready even when we don’t think they are,” she said. I want to believe her.

Even the rhythm of our home has changed. Arguments over curfew have been replaced by conversations about goals and priorities. I find myself choosing my battles differently, less interested in being right, more focused on leaving him with the memory of mutual respect. My husband takes on the tangible aspects of the transition—budgeting, credit cards, insurance policies—while my heart is consumed with the intangibles. Will he find joy? Will he find his people? Will he remember how fiercely he is loved, even in our absence?

And yet, there are gifts in this season too. The other night, unexpectedly, he sat beside me on the couch. He wanted to rewatch The Lord of the Rings, the same movie we had shared when he was small enough to curl under my arm. We watched together, quiet but connected, and when he finally stood to leave, he hugged me a beat longer than usual. “Love you, Mom,” he said without hesitation. I collected that moment like a rare jewel.

That’s what this leaving year has become—a season of gathering. I gather the laughter echoing from the basement when he games with friends, the sneakers piled by the back door, the smell of body wash drifting down the hallway after his shower. I take mental photographs of dinners when everyone shows up, of unplanned car conversations, of glimpses of the boy still visible in the young man’s face.

In the school parking lot yesterday, I passed another mom whose daughter is also a senior. We exchanged a single look, an understanding that needed no words. Pride, grief, love—all mingled together in that glance. “The leaving year,” she said softly, and I nodded. That was all.

So I keep walking this thin line. Some days I let him have his closed door, his music, his independence. Other days I knock anyway, stepping in just to ask if he needs laundry done or to remind him about a dentist appointment. It is my way of staying connected, of showing him that even as he learns to stand on his own, I’m still here.

The leaving year is not just about him preparing to leave; it’s about me learning how to let him go. And though millions of parents have walked this same road, the bittersweet truth is that every step feels both universal and uniquely my own.

So I’ll continue this delicate dance—one hand ready to let go, the other clutching tightly to these last, fleeting months.