WHAT’S SO FUNNY:Time for an empty nest

The population of Laguna has decreased by most of one high school graduating class. Last week we dropped our daughter Katie off at college, as parents are doing across the country.

Our orientation week drop-off was at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and Patti Jo felt Katie should get to the dorm right at 8 a.m. check-in. Apparently you need to arrive early to kick off the relationship with your new roommate by snatching the better bed.

Actually, Katie and her roommate, who had met by e-mail already, got along immediately, and their parents got along too, which mattered a good deal less.

The following day featured a welcoming speech by the college president, followed by the Big Kissoff, or booting out of the parents, with the unspoken understanding that we’ll pay those tuition bills on time.

Dickinson was the first college chartered in our newly recognized nation, and I like it. Patti Jo does too. We both wanted to attend along with Katie, but it’s too late for us, so we just came home childless.

We’ll miss Katie. Now we’ve got a problem. If she’s at all like me when I was in college, she’ll come home on visits with such a withering air of superiority that we’ll be reduced to a spot of grease.

On the other hand, she’s nicer than I was then, so maybe that won’t happen. So far, at least, she’s been quite friendly on the phone and in text messages.

I took the whole separation process well while in Pennsylvania. Katie was clearly excited about her new home, and Patti Jo and I were feeling good about ourselves for having helped get her there.

When we got back here I realized that we’ve never lived in this particular house without her. I went into her room to get a chair and found her cat Ruby on the bed, waiting. Everything in there was the same. The room doesn’t know she’s gone.

So we’re sad in little flashes. Patti Jo looks at me funny sometimes. She’s not sure life is going to be full enough with just me in the house. I’m not sure if I’ll be up to it, either. It’s as though my co-star in a TV series has left, and I’m supposed to carry all the episodes by myself from now on. Usually those shows get canceled.

But Patti Jo is fighting her despondency. Within the first 24 hours of our return she had begun several in-house projects. And our conversation hasn’t suffered because we talk about Katie at least as much as we did before.

Katie gets a month off for Christmas, and we’ll see her in October during a break. We’ll probably end up talking to her more in the next six months than we would if she stayed home.