Sometimes I do big things for Father�s Day. Seventeen years ago, I gave Mr. Philately Kat for Father�s Day. It was about time. I was two weeks into my tenth month of pregnancy. There is no rushing that child even now.

This Father�s Day, we will let her go. We�ve let her go for short times before. We�ve even sent her to camp for a month a few summers ago. But this time is different. This time, she is leaving home to adult things. She is leaving home for a job. She will work at camp all summer long, working the day care for staff members� small children. I will not see her for two months. Sure, she will come home again but it will not be quite the same. She will come home to stay for just a while and then she will graduate and leave again.

In some families, children stay close by even after they are grown but neither Mr. Philately nor I did. I would like it if Kat ended up close by but I do not expect it. I left home a little before I turned eighteen and never lived at home for more than a few weeks afterward. I went several states away to college and, even now, my family is scattered across the country. Mr. Philately went off to an in-state college but after that he left for the Big Apple and never lived near his parents again.

We tend to think of family as solid and unchanging but that family is fantasy. Real family invents itself over and over, changing as times and needs change. Once I was anxious to get away from my children for short periods. Now they are anxious to get away from me.

But it is not all one way. For five weeks this summer, my immediate family will consist of just Mr. Philately and me. I will miss the kids but I am excited too. It will be interesting to see the different rhythms we fall into when it is just us. It will be fun to be free to be more spontaneous in activities without having obligations to children.

Seventeen years ago, on Father�s Day, we expanded our family. This year, on Father�s Day, we begin to contract it again. In their own way, the expansion and contraction are the same. They are both gifts beyond the usual tools and ties.

But I�m still not sure whether, as we drop off Kat and her stuff, I will look at Mr. Philately as I did seventeen years ago and say, �Happy Father�s Day.�

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