Our new MPH in the family, third from left.

It seemed like just yesterday I was in L.A., helping my daughter craft the perfect letter to get her into grad school (not that she needed my help, but she wanted it and that’s like gold to me, who birthed three very independent children). It can’t be yesterday, though, because yesterday I was standing in the back yard of her graduate-student-unchic Kerrytown apartment, throwing away three sticks of butter, and an almost full carton of eggs that would not make it on the plane with her when she headed home (she’d given away everything else in the refrigerator, freezer, and cabinets, but those things somehow remained until the very last). I was tempted to take the butter myself. But I wasn’t sure it would get through airport security in my carry-on.

It was warm and dark and still at 4.a.m. as I added one more bag to the full trash can, contemplating the whirlwind three days where all furniture was sold or given away, all possessions sorted and packed, or re-gifted to the Salvation Army. I remember telling her — at five, at ten, at eighteen, always — that she could do whatever she set her mind on. I didn’t quite have in mind graduating, doing all her own final classwork, grading her students’ papers and vacating an apartment in less than a week just because she wanted to go to a wedding. Her friends said she was crazy. I said why not.

It seemed like only yesterday we’d parsed the adjectives and verbs in the letter that got her into the University of Michigan School of Public Health. And not much longer ago that I saw her for the first time, her big dark eyes locking onto my face and never letting go. But in the warm dark pre-dawn, I knew it couldn’t be, no matter how much it felt as if it were.

And then dh, newly graduated whirlwind of a daughter, and I headed to the airport to fly to opposite coasts. It seems like just two minutes since I hugged her goodbye at the airport.