Where did my little child go?

This past week I visited my daughter in Chicago as she began her new career as a recent college graduate. We have never lived so far apart, and one of my motivations for going up there was to check up on my baby. Is she living in a safe neighborhood? How does she get to work? Is she eating right? What are her new friends like? She's in her early twenties, but I think to myself she wasn't quite yet a teenager ten years ago.

I'm entering another phase where I'm no longer a mother of a college student. I liked having a daughter who was a college student because I felt that I could identify with the students' parents in my classes. There now seems to be a loss in identification within the workplace and now a loss of a child who is now independently making her own way with her new found career. However, I am ecstatic of her accomplishments and her new job security. What more could a mother ask for?

With each phase of motherhood, new questions emerge as to my role as a mother. Now, I'm a mother of an independent daughter who doesn't need to call home for money. She has a boyfriend, so her love life is going well. I suppose that we need to figure out what my role will be together--what phases lie ahead for this different mother. She is fiercely independent by nature (not too different from her mother), so there needs to emerge an appreciation of her independence at many levels. It's an exciting time for both of us, but one that comes with a few unanswered questions.