I never do well with lasts, and one of the most significant lasts for our family has arrived today: L’s last full day at home. She’ll be heading to Gainesville tomorrow in the early afternoon to move into her dorm, meet her roommate, and settle into her new life. The move-in won’t be until Tuesday, but she’s leaving tomorrow.

“She’s leaving home” echoes in Paul McCartney’s voice as I type that. Such a different departure for our Girl tomorrow. No running away. No confused parents reading a note the next morning. No sense of an underlying, unseen, misunderstood neglect. The suggestion in the song is that the unnamed girl won’t be back to see her family for a long time, perhaps the longest of times. Our Girl will be coming back for Thanksgiving for sure, but those three months will be the longest time we’ve been without her. So in a sense, I guess I still relate to the parents in the McCartney song.

It resonates for another reason, though: the parents in the song in some sense or another failed their daughter, and they didn’t even realize that they had. It’s every parent’s nightmare: that you’ve somehow failed your children without realizing you’ve failed them. We’re sending our daughter out into the world, the first steps she’s taking to her freedom, and that fear haunts us both, I think. Parents always reassure each other when they express these fears, “Oh, you did a good job with her. She’s going to be fine.” But everyone says that, and everyone can’t be right. That’s what the song is all about: everyone would have reassured those parents that they did a fine job raising their daughter. I know we made mistakes — some big mistakes. But the effort itself counts for more than we realize, I think.

I understand that only now about my own parents. They made mistakes with me, no question. But I never doubted their motivations were pure. I never doubted the security they were trying to provide for me in ways that I know view as less-than-ideal.

I also understand how difficult it must have been for them when I left shortly after college for Poland. They know it would be months, possibly a couple of years, before they’d see me again. And when I came back to the States, I settled in Boston — a fourteen-hour drive from their town. And when I left Boston, I returned to Poland. From 1996 to 2005, I really only saw them a handful of times. That must have been more difficult for them than I even now can imagine. Certainly more difficult than what we’re facing with L leaving, for we have E still at home with us, and my parents had no other child to comfort them with his proximity.

Tomorrow our daughter is leaving for college. That sounds a lot less harsh than “tomorrow our daughter is leaving for good,” but in truth, I think that’s what’s happening. Certainly, she’ll come home for long visits (she’ll be here for almost a month for Christmas), but I doubt she’ll ever live with us again in the sense that she lives with us now. And has lived with us for eighteen and a half years. She is indeed leaving home in that sense. After college, there will be grad school or a job, and even when she’s done with all of that, she won’t want to come back to this little corner of the world. With a degree in biomedical engineering, she’ll have more opportunities in bigger cities with more universities and research facilities. She’s already talking about California So perhaps we’ll see after all what my parents went through.

In the meantime, we enjoyed the day the best we could. K made racuchy for breakfast and rosół for dinner. It’s been a pattern for the last few days: fixing her favorite foods (crab cakes for dinner Friday; K’s specially marinated chicken for dinner last night).

And then there was the final packing. L went to get a few favorites to take with her, including an entire bulk box of Cheez-Its. “I can’t live without my favorite junk food,” she laughed.

The Boy chipped in, washing L’s car for her as he listened to some podcast or another.

And then an early dinner.

Thus passed L’s final Sunday here.