We let our kids go, a little at a time, their whole lives

My son Sawyer spent Monday working on an application for an internship that would take him out of state this summer.

I hope he gets it, even though it would mean he’d leave home.

It made me think about the first time I left him at preschool when he was 17 months old and how I didn’t cry, not until I got to my car.

I could see Sawyer still, through the windshield and the chain-link fence, in teacher Sheila’s arms. He had stopped crying. So I did, too.

I left him again on his first day of kindergarten, wearing his lucky lizard underpants and carrying a blue backpack so big it banged against the back of his knees when he walked.

Sawyer gave me a thumbs up with the confident air of a kid who was ready.

I left him at home alone for the first time when he was 10 after he begged to skip my grocery store run. The store was just a mile away, the neighbor was at home, and I’d be gone for a half hour tops.

Sawyer had been training his whole life for that moment: what to do in the event of an emergency, how to dial 9-1-1, not to open the door to strangers. He was ready.

We’d both been training for these moments, really, and the ones to come.

Little ones, like sleepovers and summer camp. My trips out of town. Big ones, like the first time Sawyer drove away after getting his driver’s license. When he moved into the dorm his first year of college.

Now maybe a summer internship in another state.

We’ve been leaving each other Sawyer’s whole life, little bits at a time. For me, it feels the same now that he’s 20 as it did when he was 5, terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. But we’re ready.