Having housemates reminds me of the times that we’ve opened our home in the past — various friends, a few relatives (niece and cousin), and once an entire extended family from Nicaragua who stayed during the time when our children were the smallest. It reminds me that we seem to thrive when we open our doors like this, and the more the better. We are all at our best when we’re mingling with others.

So here it is. She’s going to have a place called “home” thousands of miles from where her family lives.

To build a set of traditions can be a joyful thing, but to dismantle them can be heartbreaking. And yet some shifting and evolving of tradition is necessary as children grow up, and families change.

It’s been an amazing journey, this learning to live without our newly adult daughter who just voted in her first election, two thousand miles away.

I don’t want to be pregnant again. I don’t want any more babies, or toddlers, or preschoolers, or even young school aged children. My dream was to adopt teenagers. Yes, with an “s” at the end. More than one. A sibling set.

I dreaded this last month, felt that our connection would just snap irrevocably, and she would drift away into her life like a bear cub on an ice floe.