It starts when they’re born. You’ve just been through the most traumatic physical event of your life to that point, and now, as you limp back home, you’re saddled with the assignment of 24/7 care of the most helpless baby on the planet. Even colts get up and stagger around within an hour of their birth. But not human infants. What you want to do is put the kid in a drawer for a month while you heal. What you have to do is change a poopy diaper that happened on the way home, ironically setting the stage for the next 18 years of your life.

So you keep this little one alive while you hobble about, trying to heal, realign hormones, nurse, do the laundry and cleaning, and keep the baby clean and fed while your body just wants to sleep. That, of course, is also messed up with 2 a.m. feedings and colic and mixed up hours of day and night, and what each is supposed to be for. That eventually evens out. The kid sleeps through the night and then so do you. Gloriously.

You spend the next few years wrestling a little one who grows into a toddler much faster than you anticipated, a kid who wants to play with strange dogs, knives, fire, and deep water. The old saying that a parent’s main responsibility is to keep their young child from fulfilling his self-destructive tendencies becomes terrifyingly true.

But eventually you get the hang of it and really start enjoying your kids. In fact, they become downright fun to be with. And then–they have to go to school. You don’t realize how hard that will be until it actually happens. The first few days are a heady experience as you imagine all the things you’re going to get done. But in your heart is an empty place that stays empty until the kids come home.

So, you adapt to the school year, pack summers with fun things to do, and send the kids off to school each fall, aware of the hole that will create. They progress through the school years and you celebrate, unaware of how quickly they’re getting ready to leave you, because each day the kids come home.

Then one special day your kid walks across the stage at graduation, and your mind suddenly panics as you realize you blinked while this adult was a child and here she is now, and where did all those years go? While you search for that answer, that child/adult is laying plans and soon she’s packing up for college or a church mission or marriage or some other adventure that pulls her away to a different kind of home site. And you aren’t ready for it. No matter how much preparation you gave it, you are never ready for it. Anybody who says they are is either in denial or detached from their heart.

And then that adult/kid comes home. It’s for a visit, but you’ll eagerly take it. And while she’s there, being the amazing person you raised, you realize that her leaving was right. It was the next step that needed to happen. You realize, with painful clarity, that we raise our children up to eventually leave us. It’s what parents do. In fact, if they linger too long, we help them find ways to leave.

So as our children settle into another school year and we learn again how to deal with their absence, it helps to remember that’s what we do–we help them move on. There’s comfort in it because, despite the fact that the timing of their growing up always seems off, we wouldn’t want it any other way. The loss of their presence is keen, but their progress is how we mark our success as parents. Eventually, their progression will lead them out the door for good. And that will be okay.

Because every now and then, the kids come home.