It will get easier, I tell myself. In a weeks time, Daughter will be leaving for Junior year. Leaving? Yes. Going back to the city of Boston, no turning back on her degree. My 80 year old mother urged me to keep her home. Home is New York City, in a pandemic lull, still, no safer than Boston, another city that suffered as mine did. Mine was an epicenter, and the toll those numbers, on the daily, took on my psyche has been documented here, lodged in my memory. Still. Junior year beckons. And so, in a few days, she will leave home, yet again, but this time, for a longer period, at least until Thanksgiving, unless the almost unforeseen happens, and she’s returned to me. I work every minute of the day to keep the demons at bay, as a parent does. The odds are not ever in my favor. Still. Still. I have reckoned with the facts. If my Daughter does not complete college, she will not have the option to pursue a Masters, or to pursue teaching at the college level. If my Daughter does not complete college, she may come up against the obstacles that plagued me in my fifties. Once, as I was about to go onstage and discuss punk rock and feminism with the members of Pussy Riot, I got a call from a team of HR yahoos, who were ushering me through an arduous interview process for a high level corporate job, and it was not a friendly call. They took me to task for not graduating college. Oh the curse of being able to be reached so easily, these damned cel phones. I had more important things to think about, for instance, why feminism mattered, and yet, these two women were speaking at me at the top of their lungs. Oh the irony. And so, I’m haunted by that ridiculous moment, and it ranks high up on my list for begrudgingly supporting my Daughter as she returns to college. She will have a Junior year of sorts, she will be learning how to speak in Sign Language and she will be learning how to write sitcoms, and she will be learning other things. She will be working with her improv troupe, of which she is now President, on sketch. She will be living within the confines of rules, new to her, equipped with masks and germ keys and hand sanitizer and alcohol wipes, and I have such sorrow that this is her experience, that this is the world in which we roam now. But. But. But. It will get easier. And that is the mantra.