College graduation, letting go, and the strange realization that our children sometimes grow up faster than we do.

I’m driving down the Mass Pike on my way to work.

I absolutely do not want to go in today, but I need to make money. Also, my son has been with me since effectively last Thursday, when I landed in the swamps of Jersey for his college graduation.

Yes. My son graduated from college.

More specifically, he graduated from the adult transition program at Rowan College of South Jersey—the program that made his dream of going to college a reality.

I’m fairly certain that, if he had wanted to, he could have focused more on academics instead of choosing the employment track. He might have gone on to matriculate and take college courses.

But that isn’t where my son’s mind is, and I respect that.

You can’t make your children want the life you imagined for them. You can’t make them do anything they don’t want to do, really. You can encourage them, support them, bribe them with food and occasionally threaten to change the Wi-Fi password—but eventually, their lives belong to them.

But back to the Mass Pike.

I’m heading toward Fabric Place Basement, where I work. It is the best fabric store in New England. The best fabric store I’ve ever seen, period—and I’ve been to the good ones in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, I’m wishing I could be at Six Flags New England getting sick on roller coasters instead. I bought season passes in June. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

My son is ready to go back to his dad’s house and, from there, to his group home after spending a week with me.

And I am ready for him to go.

Oh, God. How do I say that without sounding like a terrible mother?

Because there is a part of me that wishes he could stay longer. I have asked him to stay longer, by the way. Several times.

He does not want to stay.

Then there is another part of me that is ready for my grown-ass, 25-year-old, college-graduate son—and I am so incredibly proud of him—to return to the life he has built for himself so I can return to mine.

I sometimes think my child grew up faster than I grew up as a parent.

I feel as if I’ve been a parent for about 10 years less than he has actually been on this earth.

I know that isn’t true. Even when I didn’t see him every day or speak to him every day, I was still his mother. You don’t ever stop being a parent.

The good ones don’t.

And you are, dear reader, one of the good ones.

But I wasn’t there for all of the day-to-day nitty-gritty. I missed some of the tiny moments and minor milestones that show you, almost imperceptibly, that your child is becoming an adult.

So maybe he grew up while some part of me stayed behind.

I am never completely ready to let him go, even though I know he is a grown-ass man who is more than ready to return to his own life—after a short stint with his father and, of course, his cats.

We are a multi-pet family.

I start to feel that familiar letdown when I think about taking him home. Then I remind myself to cherish every moment I have with him in the here and now.

Even the absolutely delightful autistic meltdown that began at five o’clock this morning and continued intermittently until roughly 11:15, when I finally left for work.

Every. Single. Moment.

Did I handle it correctly?

Do I ever handle any of this correctly?

Yesterday, I found myself talking to a 16-year-old who was upset about something their parents had said. The teenager was told, “There will be other relationships.”

Which is technically true.

There almost certainly will be other relationships.

But when you’re 15 or 16, your first—or second, or third—high school boyfriend is everything. You don’t believe there will be another one. You think this is it.

Isn’t that part of the joy and agony of being a teenager?

So instead of telling this kid what I thought about the relationship, I said, “Yeah. Parents say stupid stuff.”

Because we do.

Later, when they were worried about how their father might react to something difficult, they texted him.

Why does Gen Z text everything?

Anyway, I told them the truth: When you sign up to be a parent, you sign up for all of it—the good, the bad, the meltdowns, the heartbreaks and the panicked requests for rides to the mall.

You love your children through all of it.

“My son regularly loses his shit at me,” I told them, “and then calls me five minutes later to ask for a ride to the mall.”

And that’s okay.

Because we love our kids no matter what.

My own mother taught me that, although she did it inadvertently.

We used to have epic fights. One Christmas, we had a truly horrendous one. I left because I thought my mother had said something absolutely unforgivable.

My mother couldn’t understand why I was leaving.

It was Christmas. We’d had a fight.

So what?

As parents, we don’t always realize how deeply our words can spear our children. They do. They leave scars.

But how we weather those scars—and what we eventually do with them—is up to us.

Looking back on that Christmas with another five years of parenting experience, I understand what my mother taught me through that one awful fight. It was exactly what I tried to tell that teenager yesterday:

You can say the worst possible thing to your parents and then call them five minutes later to ask for a ride to the mall.

And, yeah, we’ll probably give you one.

We may be angry. We may be hurt. We may turn the music up a little too loudly and pretend we aren’t speaking to you while we drive.

But we’ll come.

We signed up to keep coming.

Joey, I love you.

I’ve made mistakes. More than a few.

But I hope you know what I have been trying to tell you all along:

You are perfect exactly as you are.

There is nothing you could ever do that would change how I feel about you.

And even when I’m driving away from you on the Mass Pike, a part of me is always turning around.