Well...

Katie is visiting. 

Portland. 

Not really us. We are just the bed and bathroom supplier. She and her roommates are taking a little summer trip and starting with some things in Portland so they are spending the night at the house. They stopped in briefly, dropped off bags, visited with Tig and took off again to go have fun in town. They will come back late and then leave again tomorrow to head out to the coast. 

It's weird. 

Not too long ago a long weekend like this might mean she would come up from Bend for sure, but it was to hang out with us. Now we are just a place to crash. 

We are going through a lot of the things that other people did when their kids were 15 or 16. That space where friends are much more important than parents. She has a social circle now. She has other people that she consults with about travel, about plans, about her life. We are firmly in the secondary role now. 

It's weird for us, but totally normal for life. 

I know I've written before in years past about how lucky we were that she still wanted to hang out with us and do stuff with us. And to be fair she still does, she'll go with us to Michigan in August. But now we aren't the primary people she wants to hang out with. Her girlfriend, her friends, those are her people. We are just family. 

Totally normal now.

But still weird. 

I think we were expecting it when she was younger. To get shunted aside at any point. But she wasn't comfortable with other people like that. I mean, we know now what was going on, but wrote it off as just extremely shy and socially awkward at the time. But now? Now she's comfortable in her own space so she's comfortable with other people. And that means relationships that don't feature her parents. 

So we learn to let go again. 

We've done it in stages. College away. Job away. Other people away. 

Each stage with your kids, each time you learn to let them go, you have to talk yourself into it. Tell yourself how normal it is. How it's part of life. And each time you think you're done. You've let go. Until you find another space where you need to learn to let go some more. 

And I get it, some parents never do learn that lesson. You get some really overly involved in-laws and grandparents and if it works for them, then godspeed. And you get some overly detached as well. Like the kid left and they changed the locks, put the house up for sale and moved to Boca. And I guess that can work for them as well. 

Brent and I left. Detached pretty solidly at 18. Purposefully set off to forge our own paths. I know it was harder on his parents than it was on mine. He is an only child and I am a oh holy shit another one? 

Katie is an only. And she didn't run away from us as a teen. Or out of college. Or for the first few years of working in another city. And to be fair, she's not running now. She's just got her own life, her own friends, her own path. And it's totally normal.

And weird.