Than he wanted to come home.

He begs each day to come home -- not home, not to us, but to transfer to the college where his lovely and loving girlfriend goes, which offers him not one single opportunity in anything he had ever hoped to do before he met her.

All the parents I know say, give it a month, give it two. But he's already filling out applications -- and even his girlfriend is a little alarmed. Only she can make him happy, he says. And nothing he ever cared about before can make him happy without her.

It's a story old as time, a tale as old as rhyme, as the song says. But hearing your beloved son tell it, with panic and pain in his voice, makes it new. Other parents complain that their sons don't write, don't call, seem to have vanished into thin air. But he was always a "home boy," a kid who loved his life as it was.

Days before he left, I begged him to take a year off and reconsider. Did he really want to go through the rigors of acting school? Did he really want to go so far (six hours) away from home? He was sure he'd be just fine.

He wasn't fine. Not even for a day. He has made great friends. He's attracted the attention of great girls. But none of them makes him as happy as his high-school girlfriend did. I could explain. I'm a widow. I never imagined anyone could make me even a tenth as happy as his father -- whom he scarcely remembers -- did. Now, I can't imagine life without my husband, who adopted this son and all my children nine years ago. And neither can they.

The short view is so short.

Parting hurts like surgery the first day. The next day, it's 100 percent better. The next day, it's 100 percent better yet. But I fear he will never get emotionally beyond that first day, when every part of him hurts.

If he leaves, and goes to the place where nothing awaits him except the girl he loves, and regrets it, she's wise enough to know he'll blame her forever.

And so we have resolved not to abandon him, not to enable him. We try to stand firm, not to call too often, not to write too much. We miss him with a wicked twist. And we dare not let him know; or the whole house of cards would collapse.

How will he feel nine weeks from now? A semester from now? Friends tell us, easily, "We told our son, our daughters, that they couldn't change their minds until after a year." And that sounds so easy to say; but it is so rough to endure. It has driven even thoughts of my novel, newly born, from my mind.

Perhaps as parents, we simply are wimps.

We were probably better off in a generation gone away -- running a family farm, where the boys brought their brides home and built a house. This is not that world, though. And he has to walk like a man.

So do we.

yours,

Jackie M.