Growing up is hard, even at 49

I could tell her I'm remembering my own freshman year at college, which wasn't much fun, and how homesick I was too. But we've talked enough about that. So I tell her about the short story I'm writing for my creative writing class. The main characters are at a one-room airport office just like the one in Haines and have the opportunity to talk because the plane they are both waiting for is stuck in Juneau on a weather hold.

I have a feeling she hopes that her plane back to school gets canceled and that all planes out of here are grounded and that the ferries break down too, so she gets stuck in Haines forever. I know that but don't say anything since I don't want to spend the last afternoon of her spring break fretting about her leaving.

In a few hours she'll take a small plane right over this same spot and on down the channel to Juneau. She'll fly by our house where I'll be standing on the porch in a red jacket, waving.

Then she'll catch a jet to Seattle, spend the night and fly to Colorado. The little college she attends is in a dry valley where there really are tumbling tumbleweeds. They haven't had more than a dusting of snow all winter.

"I really like the snow and the clouds," she says, now looking up at a skiing magazine cover view, here where the sea meets the Alps. "They say Colorado is pretty, but I'm not seeing it."

Have I handicapped my children by raising them in such a beautiful place? Should I have faced their bedroom windows away from the view, or fed them frozen TV dinners and taught them to play video games instead of to skate and ski?

But I don't have time to think about that now, because I want to make a family dinner before that 5:45 plane.

I put John Hiatt on the stereo and call my older daughters and tell them to come on over for their sister's send-off. Then I saute onions, garlic and red peppers, brown moose sausage, add tomatoes, white beans, Italian spices and a coffee cup full of wine and let it all simmer. There was fresh asparagus in town this week, so I drop a bunch in a pan of boiling water until it's tender and set it gently on a plate of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and put a pot on for the noodles.

I am making the perfect ending to a perfect day and the perfect beginning to my daughter's last weeks of her first year in college.

You can guess where this is going: best laid plans and all that.

Well, it suddenly started to snow. My daughter called the airport, hoping her plane was canceled and hung up with a sob because she was told it was leaving in 10 minutes. Pandemonium erupted. It was the emotional equivalent of Mount Redoubt, with tears instead of ashes. The running around, shouting up and down the stairs, the crying, the hugging, the dogs barking, all amid a chorus of: "I don't want to go yet!" "Of course you do" and "I love you."

After she left I tried not to think about the snow and flying in bad weather and how I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to the terrific little-big girl I just pushed out the door.

Of course we all know that this is what college students do: They go to college. And since there is no college in Haines, they have to leave home to do it. Also, it is not like we haven't done this before. She is the fourth sibling to leave home for an education. You'd think we'd have learned something by now.

I wonder if I will ever be as grown-up as my parents were when I was in college.

I was breathing normally again, when, as quickly as they left, my daughter and my husband were back. It had been a false alarm, the weather was fine now, it was apparently just a local squall and she'd go as scheduled.

Everyone laughed and said, "Welcome home," and we all sat down to dinner in the middle of the afternoon. It wasn't as much fun as I had hoped. I wish I could tell you that everything was easier the second time we said goodbye, but it wasn't.

We all know that everyone has to leave home sometime, even if it's temporary. It is a big part of growing up. That must be why my heart hurts. I'm 49 years old and I'm having growing pains.

Heather Lende lives and writes in Haines.