This summer, for five weeks, Mr. Philately and I will have no children at home. Mostly, I am excited and looking forward to it. Partly, I am dreading it. I�ve always drawn my best friends from amongst my family. Kat and Day are great company often (although when it�s bad, it�s really bad.)

Kat will be gone all summer. After prodding and pushing and getting nowhere, I watched as a job fell into her lap. She will be working in a babysitting unit at a camp where she will spend her days amusing the small children of some of the other staffers. She has her job and it will take her away. She will go up to the residential camp almost immediately after school ends and will not return until mid-August when we go on a family trip to meet my parents for a vacation in Pennsylvania.

Day will be around for a few weeks before she goes off to a girl scout program run at a local college. Living at the college is part of the experience. The program involves learning about web design in the mornings and doing other activities in the afternoons. Last year, it gave her great confidence in the notion that she could go off to college and she could like it. She is looking forward to returning this year.

Once she comes home, she will have approximately 24 hours, barely time to do her laundry and re-pack. After that, we will take her up to a YMCA residential camp she has attended in the past. She�s gone for two weeks but never for the four she will be there this summer. Day is my homebody but she has decided that it is time to challenge that part of herself. She wants them to get to know her and for her to get to know whether she could like being away from home for a substantial time. Day, being Day, has big plans. She wants to be junior staff there next year.

And so we will get our practice for emptying the nest. Our relationship is so much bigger and wider than our children so we should be just fine. We laugh, we cry, we debate, we sigh, and we have fun together.

But my babies are leaving home and it came so much sooner than I expected.

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