My husband and I said goodbye to our son on a recent Saturday afternoon at the airport. He was off for two and a half months of travel on the other side of the world, embarking on a gap year before he starts college next fall.

I’m not an openly sentimental person, but my voice caught in my throat as I hugged him goodbye. I surprised myself. It was as if I had spent so much time being occupied — an all-encompassing word for busy, annoyed, frustrated, losing patience — preparing him for the trip that I hadn’t taken a moment to think about him actually being gone. My mind was mired in the details of plane reservations, packing lists, visas, and plans, plans, plans. I discovered that he had never obtained his official driver’s license after his provisional expired, and hounded him for days about it. He ended up at the DMV several times until they were satisfied with his paperwork. Then there were the multiple shopping trips, outings to CVS, the cajoling, questioning, and constant email patter: “Did you see the latest email on your trip? Have you emailed that person back yet?”

No, I hadn’t gotten beyond the getting him out. But the day before he left, I stopped by to survey the damage from the packing hurricane that had torn through his room and slowly looked around, realizing it would be empty for the next 10 weeks. There would be no parents weekend visit where we could see his dorm room, meet his friends. Yes, he would be back in December, but ostensibly off again after the holidays for his next endeavor.

I’ve been thinking about how I always tell people I’m from North Carolina, but lost much of my Southern accent because I haven’t lived there since I was 18. Yes, I went back for some summers and holidays, but after college I moved to DC. I had a summer at home between moves a few years later, but I don’t really count that. Having lived in Washington longer than anywhere else, I’m practically a DC native.

Is our son going to say the same years from now? Will he have moved from our home the day he got on that plane bound for Sydney?

Maybe the gap year is different — there is still some uncertainty about his plans — but he is not expected to be at home this spring, and maybe not even this summer. A multitude of adventures await him, and I couldn’t be more excited for him. He is on the trip of a lifetime, making memories and friends he will never forget. 

They say youth is wasted on the young, but in my mind traveling is made for the young. I take heart in knowing our firstborn is exactly where he should be right now, doing exactly what he should be doing. Take this time, I say, before getting on the conveyor belt of college, work, housing, daily commutes, bills, routines. Wring every drop from the towel of adventure, self-discovery, friendship, and yes, probably — hopefully — hardship. Travel provides the kind of self-test not offered in school. The unpredictability of it — unforeseen situations and how you react to them — those are lessons not found in any syllabus.

I’m reluctantly resigned to the fact that I won’t be there for those lessons, to witness how he reacts and grows. I will be here at home, waiting to greet the person who walks in the door afterward. Is it possible he won’t change much? I doubt it. He is seeking, ready to breath in, absorb. Taking a year off was his idea, not mine or my husband’s. It never occurred to me. In fact, I found my usually adventurous nature turning cautious — why would he want to be a year behind all his friends starting college? It’s not “normal” — is it even a little weird?

I see now that in this decision he’s already demonstrating his unique nature: a willingness to depart from what’s expected, from the norm. He never looked back, once he decided to defer his college acceptance. I only hope he continues this tendency, this ability to look inside himself, to listen to his own voice. It is something I didn’t really do, or know to do, until several years out of college, when I quit my job in DC and moved to New York with only the promise of a summer internship and a bed in a friend’s apartment until her roommate returned in the fall.

That New York adventure wound up lasting more than a year, and ultimately led to my moving to Seattle to be with my then-ill sister, and traveling around the world once we knew she would be OK. Those years of adventure are when I really became myself and came into myself. I lived with people I’d never met, discovered parts of the city on my own, discovered parts of the world I never knew, got lost, got found, got scared, and had a blast.

Our son is younger than I was then, but in some ways he is wiser.

He is scheduled to come home December 1st, but just two days into his travels, he texted us to ask if he can extend his trip to travel with “my friends.” We all discussed this idea before he made his flights and he emphatically said he did not want to stay beyond the program. This latest communique was typically frustrating — it could be costly to change flights — but my husband and I laughed about it too. He’s happy, and already has “my friends.” 

I think about my own parents and how they must have felt when their four kids left home. If they were sad, I don’t remember, or didn’t pay attention. (It’s possible they rejoiced.) We attended colleges and grad schools, got jobs and got married, traveled and moved away. But we did return often to that same house we grew up in — for many, many years — until it was sold a few years ago.

I may tell people I left North Carolina when I was 18, but I don’t really mean it.