The Last Sweet Year of High School Slips Away It began with the last PTA "Back-to-School Coffee." This season of lasts, when every ritual, every event, seems freighted with extra meaning. It's my only child's senior year of high school, a year in which we are preparing to transition to the next phase of our lives. Perched on metal bleachers with the other team parents, my husband and I watched the sun go down behind the scoreboard of what would be Anna's last high school water polo game. We trundled through her schedule of classes during the last back-to-school night. I had Anna pick the tulips we would plant for her last spring at home (for now, anyway), and they bloomed in a riot of lovely, bulbous pastels. It's our last chance, too, to teach her all she should know before she goes off to college. She can cook, do laundry, keep a budget, choose friends and classes wisely, advocate for herself, read a map. Still, I have a nagging feeling that I have forgotten to note some essential thing. The same feeling that led me, like a character in a movie, to blurt out as we dropped Anna off for summer sleepaway camp years ago, that she should see the nurse if her period came. As poignant as they have been, I have been somewhat prepared for the "lasts." I tucked a tissue into my pocket for the Back-to-School Coffee, during which I remained unusually upbeat (had I really attended 12 of these?). On campus that morning, I truly felt that I'd had my fill. The baby-faced freshmen who asked me for directions seemed ages younger than Anna. I chatted with my parent cohort over the trays of coffee cake and fruit, continuing the discussion we'd started some time last year: "Can you believe they'll be graduating?" For all the "lasts," it may be the "firsts" that hit harder. As parents of teenagers, we know they're coming, but we can't plan and schedule them the same way, so they arrive with a blunt force. The first time I reluctantly let Anna drive into the city with older friends, I fretted until she came home. There had been no ramp-up, no preparation. She had somehow gone from traveling with friends as far as the nearest large intersection to crossing a bridge into the city for a midnight screening of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." While I considered saying no, I also knew that I trusted her and her friends and that it was time to stretch my comfort zone, to let the tether go a little further out. Still, I didn't sleep until I got an earlier-than-expected phone call to let me know that the movie had sold out. The group had gotten burgers and was heading home. When Anna got her driver's permit, and then license, my husband and I shifted to the passenger seats, watching as she carefully drove on the same mountain road (an alternative to the faster highway) that we had driven, as slow as a stagecoach, home from the hospital the day after she was born. On Halloween, she drove us further afield to our favorite pumpkin farm, where we had taken her every year. We were secretly delighted that our 17-year-old still cherished our Halloween rituals of choosing pumpkins, digging for potatoes and eating fresh pumpkin ice cream. She consented to posing for lots of pictures, which she wouldn't have done just a few years ago. Everything is sweeter this year. I recently watched as she drove off for the first time by herself, the taillights of our old Mazda receding down the street in the growing dusk. I felt a physical sensation of letting go, little by little. Of course, there is no alternative. As a parent of a high school senior, I've had to make peace with the fact that this time next year, she will be making most of her own decisions. The same ones she still seeks our counsel on, and the ones for which we offer unsolicited advice, will join the growing group of choices and activities we know nothing about at all. This is appropriate and timely, but it still stings to think we won't be in each other's daily lives. The teenage years have given us many chances to practice letting go, to let Anna become more independent and stay out later. We've learned to bite our tongues when certain choices were made and to listen more than we talk, so that we'll remain in the loop. We've learned to treasure the small moments that have largely taken the place of big outings together - the gentle shoulder-to-shoulder bonding during neighborhood walks after dinner or drives on slow weekend afternoons. We've enjoyed time spent together in the kitchen making old favorite dishes (will she make chicken Marbella or blueberry jam with her friends, I wonder?), as well as new ones of Anna's choosing, which seem to involve a lot of vegan desserts. Soon there will be the last graduation, if not from school, then from this phase of it. Because I imagine it will feel quite final, I will bring (and likely need) tissues. I will also do well to remember that the ceremony is called a commencement for a reason, and that with all the lasts come many new firsts. I'll be excited for this next phase of all of our lives and for the enduring bonds we forged during this one.