Can You Be a Gilmore Girl in the Singular?

I didn't deem myself a Gilmore Girl. Years before I'd ever seen the show, people were telling me that my daughter and I reminded them of the Gilmore Girls. Even so, I was shocked when I watched my first episode, just three or four years ago. I may have checked my house for bugs and hidden cameras.

See, I'd always thought it was just the basics that made people say that--I was the single parent of a teenage girl. We got along and were basically partners in life. We both had long, brown hair, but hers was a little lighter than mine.

It wasn't that.

In part, it was the open lines of communication and the intelligence and the deep friendship that layered perfectly with the mother-daughter relationship.

But still, there was more.

Mostly, the constant, unrelenting humor and inside jokes and reference-based conversation. And the fact that when an online friend asked me whether we talked fast like the real Gilmore Girls, I was surprised to learn that they talked fast.

Maybe most of all--though I didn't recognize it at the time--it was Lorelei's constant, certain drive to empower her daughter to be the separate person she was meant to be, even though the inevitable result of that was beyond her imagination.

Sure, Tori and I made jokes about how when she moved out I'd have to subscribe to the magazine she usually read most of out loud to me on the day it arrived, and how we'd adopt the Post-It note system that the Gilmores employed during that awful time when they didn't speak for months.

But, the day-to-day stuff...there's no telling in advance what that looks like.

My daughter is turning twenty on Friday. She hasn't moved out, but she spends a lot of time at her boyfriend's house. As I write this, I haven't seen her in five days. The flexible life we've always lived together--I homeschooled her, and we both freelance--gives her the flexibility to go visiting whenever she likes, for as long as she likes...just like the way we traveled together throughout her teens.

Can I tell you a secret?

I love when she's gone. Absolutely love the formless days and nights and the quiet whenever I choose it. I get more work done, and my living room is cleaner. I'm an immersion writer, so that uninterrupted alone time really allows me to thrive, creatively and professionally.

She knows this, and it doesn't hurt her feelings. She gets me. She loves me a lot, and she enjoys hanging out with me, and she doesn't miss me when she's doing something else.

And then I get up to pour a cup of coffee and it suddenly hits me that maybe those days of running out to get her an iced mocha before she wakes up in the morning are truly gone forever. Maybe I'll never again see that sleepy little smile and hear her murmur sincerely, "I'm loved," because I knew she'd need coffee this morning and went out in the cold to get it.

And I feel like someone's kicked me in the stomach.

Change is an everyday part of raising a child, and I've long said that each new stage is in its own way as good as the one before. Though a part of me misses the tiny toddler on my hip, the shiny-faced kindergartner, the budding adolescent, I can't wish back any of those days...because I wouldn't have missed the ones that came after for the world.

I suspect that will be true of what's on the horizon as well. I suspect that I will be as unreservedly happy to see my baby moving into her first apartment as I was the first day she didn't look back before walking through the doors to school.

I'm pretty sure.

But, I don't know what it looks like. And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that, so I thought I'd share the journey.