I Am So Excited for You to Go - And I will miss you more than I know how to say.

I am so excited for you to go.

Maybe that’s the strangest part of all of this. There is no part of me wishing you weren’t ready. You are so ready. I look at you and think about the people you haven’t met yet, the classes you haven’t taken, the mistakes you haven’t made, the things you’ll discover you’re good at. I want all of it for you. I cannot wait to see who you become when the world gets bigger.

But there’s another truth sitting right beside that one.

I am going to miss you terribly. Not because I want to turn back the clock, but because for eighteen years with you and fifteen as the four of us, we have been a family in a very particular way. Mom, Dad, big sister, little brother. And I love us. I love our family unit.

I loved the big things, of course – the vacations and birthdays and graduation, all the moments we knew enough to photograph. But those aren’t what’s breaking my heart right now. It’s the ordinary stuff.

Family meetings that weren’t really meetings, everyone just landing in the living room, half-watching Jeopardy or some renovation show, half-talking, nobody trying to make it happen. It just happened.

Of course, I love a good family planning meeting too – managing expectations, getting us all rowing the boat in the same direction, calendaring the events, big and small. Reducing any friction for the weekend ahead.

Oh, and I love our traditions: balloons and donuts on your birthday morning, IHOP before the first day of school, reindeer food sprinkled on the grass on Christmas Eve, and so many more.

Cooking together in the kitchen, even the nights we argued about whose way was right, whose knife technique, whose timing. Especially those nights, honestly, because underneath the bickering was something neither of us said out loud: we liked being in there together. Us all tasting whatever dessert you’d decided to make. Me playing your sous chef so you could make your mealtime magic.

Watching you and your brother with each other - gosh, that’s my greatest gift. The way you’d give him a ride with no hesitation, no questions, no keeping score. The hours you’d spend playing video games or just talking about nothing. I’d walk past the doorway and not even go in, just take it in from a distance: two people who happened to be siblings choosing each other’s company anyway.

I loved hearing friends running in the front door that I wasn’t expecting, walking in and saying hi like I was just part of the scenery, which is exactly what I wanted to be. The sound of girls in the kitchen baking something that turned into a production, flour everywhere, someone’s playlist going.

Family board games. A puzzle that somehow stayed on the table for days. Finding a show we all loved and watching episode after episode, everyone piled into the same room, nowhere else we particularly needed to be.

Driving. Not the errand of it, but the accidental intimacy of it – kids in the backseat telling stories to each other like I wasn’t even up front. And the opposite too: the drives to and from school when it was just one of us, and somehow the car made it easier to say the real things. A random lunch, just because we both happened to be home. You sitting in the kitchen telling me something that happened that day. Knowing that even without plans, you were just here.

Just this week, driving with you, I mentioned we’d go to IHOP on Friday. Neither of us said anything else. We didn’t have to. Your eyes welled up, mine did too, because we both knew exactly what that meant. The last time.

I don’t think I understood, while we were living it, that this was the good stuff. No one told me to pay attention, that I only had so many of these left. We just lived them. Now I understand some of them are ending.

Of course you’ll come home. There will still be lunches and board games and desserts and shows we watch together, and a hundred new traditions I can’t see yet. But it won’t be quite the same, because your life will start happening somewhere else. And that is exactly what I want for you.

That’s the contradiction I can’t fully explain. I can be unbelievably excited for the life ahead of you and still grieve the life we’re leaving behind. Both are true. I can want you to go and still wish for one more ordinary Tuesday.

Because you leave a hole. Not one that your little brother needs to fill, not one that needs fixing. Just an oldest-child-shaped space in the everyday rhythm of our family. And maybe that space is simply proof that something wonderful was there.

It wasn’t perfect. But underneath all of that was us, and I will always be grateful for us.

Now I get to know you differently. I won’t know what you had for lunch or who made you laugh walking back from class. I won’t always know when you’re having a hard day. That might be the hardest part of letting you go.

But I believe in you more than I’m afraid of missing you. I believe in your judgment, your strength, your goodness. I believe you’re going to build a beautiful life – not necessarily an easy one, but one that’s completely yours.

So go have the nights you’ll talk about for the rest of your life. Meet people who change you. Call me when you’re homesick, and call me when you’re happy. Come home and tell us stories we weren’t there for. I will listen to every word.

For eighteen years I got the privilege of helping you build a life. Now I get the privilege of watching you live it.

So go. There will always be a perfect space here for you. Not because something is missing. Because someone deeply loved began exactly where you were supposed to begin: at home.