I said goodbye to my daughter yesterday. Watched her hand her boarding pass over to the flight attendant and walk the plank to the Delta flight waiting to take her some 7,000 miles away. She's off to visit family in Israel and she'll be gone a month. Four long weeks. She's 15 and this is the first time she's made this journey alone without being tagged as a child traveling alone with a paid airline escort. She's a seasoned traveler and she's made this trip several times, so I know she'll be fine. In fact, she texted me from the Atlanta airport, where she made her connection. She caught the tram to another terminal like a pro and texted me when was comfortably seated on her connecting flight. As I type this, she should be landing in Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, where excited family members anxiously await her arrival. They will spoil and pamper her the entire month.

I miss her already.

Her traveling halfway around the world alone is not what has my panties tied in a knot. No. It's realizing that this is a trial run for the real thing. The day when she'll be leaving and not coming back. Oh, she'll return for the occasional visit, but if she moves halfway across the country as I did, those visits may be rationed out to only once or twice a year. The thought has me wishing for a Paxil prescription.

I was sure when my daughter was born it was payback time. Karma can be a bitch and there was no doubt in my mind that this little package of joy was a time bomb set to go off as retribution for all the grief I had caused my own mother.  Somehow, so far, that hasn't happened. My daughter has never raised her voice to me, never once lashed out in anger, "I hate you!" She still tells me she loves me and she actually talks to me and asks my opinion on everything from what classes to take, to what to wear. She's beautiful. She constantly receives compliments, but it hasn't gone to her head.

I seemed to have somehow dodged the payback bullet.

As your children grow up, become surly, call you names, slam the door to their room in anger--those are the things that make separation easier. It's nature's way of finally cutting the umbilical cord, letting go and allowing your children take that first solo flight--even welcoming it.

But what do you do when she's the best part of your day? When still at 15, she says, "Mom, I love you sooo much?"  When you can sit on her bed and laugh at something silly until you're both in tears? When you enjoy sharing celebrity gossip? And an outing to the secondhand bookstore and a stop at Starbucks together is kickass fun?

Adolescence isn't over yet. I guess I can still hope that in the next 2 1/2 years, she'll turn into a rather unappealing version of me at that age and, while I'll still love her fiercely, an angst-filled metamorphosis would make it infinitely easier to let her go.