When I went away to college, my mother gave me a postcard with the same Irish Blessing my grandmother had given to my father (my grandmother was Irish):
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
When my kids started their freshman year at college, I gave them the same Irish Blessing. Dropping my oldest daughter off was not as challenging as leaving my youngest son. For some reason, even if I knew that it was the right choice, the perfect place, and that he could not be in a better university, I cried since the day I stepped off the plane, until I came back. Somehow I knew that as he was starting his own journey, so was I, since I would be home without my children for a couple of years. I have to say that every day that I walk by his room, I get a comforting feeling knowing that it was time for him to start his own journey of life.
I want to mention that one of my friends commented on the process of dropping our children off as preparing for giving birth to them and this phrase has stayed with me ever since. Even as we prepare for their departure, make lists, buy things, coordinate logistics, and plan months in advance, you are never quite ready to say goodbye and leave them at the dorm; just like when we are never prepared to what awaits us when we walk into the delivery room at the hospital.
Now, I thank God for FaceTime and Whatsapp. When I was in college, I received a weekly handwritten letter from my mom and called once a week from an AT&T payphone in the lobby of my dorm. Every day, I realize how much my children are growing up on their own, finding their own way, and paving their path towards their future. Being away provides them with space to make their own decisions and seek their own destiny.