After a month or two of summer, I’m usually ready to for school to begin. Maybe I like the discipline it requires because at some point, I flail at the lack of structure.

Not so this summer, because this is our daughter’s last at home before she leaves for Michigan State in a few weeks. And while that’s exciting, I think I’m going to miss her.

I always thought I’d be enthused for this moment. Finally, I’d have time to, oh, I don’t know, do a few things I hadn’t done before such as take tap dancing lessons or, call me crazy, join the Republican Party ... at least they're disciplined.

But instead, it has me thinking of how I will spend that extra time with only our son, a high school junior, at home. I don’t think he wants me to plop all that time on him. He’s pretty independent and happy enough that I come to his basketball games.

Since I won’t be watching “So You Think You Can Dance” or getting a mani/pedi with him like I did with my daughter, the net result is more time for me. And since I swear I won’t waste it worrying how my daughter is faring in college (or, will I?) I’m a little nervous how I’ll handle the freedom.

It’s not like I haven’t gone through transitions before. When a corporate reorganization eliminated my job a few years ago, I had to learn how to be “at home” all day while trying to jumpstart a second career as a work-from-home writer. To my surprise, there were days I spent more time on laundry, sudden trips to Target for toothpaste and toilet paper and chauffeuring the kids around than I did at the keyboard.

When the kids started to drive themselves to school and their own activities, I finally had more time to write. But it wasn’t like they were out-of-sight, out-of-mind. It seemed I still did things for them they were capable of doing themselves (even though they were perfectly self-sufficient when I wasn’t around). And even though I liked to gripe that their arms weren’t broken, believe it or not, I enjoyed fixing them snacks after a long day at school.

But I think this will be a much different transition. After nearly 18 years, my husband and I are used to having kids around. And a lot of that time was spent at parent/teacher conferences, dance recitals, basketball games and wondering if they’d ever clean their rooms. Then there’s the process of learning all that stuff they’d need to succeed whether it was studying for a test or learning to do their own laundry. With one of them off to college, however, I have a feeling there will be a much bigger gap than I’m willing to admit.

Will I flail about?

I might. But I also suspect there will be a rhythm that will develop naturally; like the rhythm that you fall into when you pack lunches at night and make coffee before you leave for work in the morning; or the rhythm required for weekend chores: making sure the bills are paid, the grass is cut, the oil’s changed, the laundry’s done, the bottles are returned and there’s enough Gatorade in the frig. And at some point, having our daughter gone will just feel normal.

So will watching her develop her own rhythm as she navigates life away from her parents. Not that we’re done: we get to do it all over again when our son leaves for college. But by then, it may not feel so foreign.