Finish lines. We watched a lot of them this month in the Olympic Games. That moment a runner breaks across that line���straining so hard as to appear almost horizontal���there is palpable relief. On their part and on ours. The race is over. The work is done. It is an iconic image, one we try to recreate over and over in our own less-then-Olympic intensity lives. It is human nature to divide and conquer, as in, ���When I accomplish X, my race will be over and I can relax.���

This week, as I prepare to send my first child off to college, I am thinking what a fallacy this way of thinking is in the parenting realm. I remember each stage with her and my idea of how conquering them would lead us closer to that mirage of a finish line. If she could just sleep through the night... potty train... get into the best school for her... survive those awkward middles school years...navigate high school without losing herself to the pitfalls of teenagehood. So, here we are. Every single one of those obstacles circumvented. And bonus���she���s into the college of her choice���off to the Big Apple to study at Fordham���s Lincoln Center campus, smack dab in the middle of Manhattan.

But do I feel the exhilaration of a runner who���s run the good race, who���s crossed the finish line, ushering their offspring from childhood to adulthood? No, I don���t. I feel excitement for her, nervousness about all she���ll face on her own, and confidence that she���s ready for every bit of it. But I don���t feel finished.

I used to think it was ironic that graduation ceremonies were called commencements. It seemed as though they were mislabeling an ending as a beginning. But now I get it. Those milestone moments we fantasize about? They are, indeed, beginnings, not endings���starting blocks rather than finish lines. Invitations to step into what will be and pause to reflect on the hard-won lessons of our most recent race.

That���s what I���m doing now with my daughter as we inhabit this liminal space between high school and college���between childhood and adulthood���that will not come again. Last night, my kids went for a swim at the club down the street. Andie wore an old swim team suit, and seeing her in it took me right back to the decade she swam for the Green Wave in that same pool. The hundreds of races I���d watched. The meets I never missed even when I was two days away from giving birth to Jack.

I listened to the calls of ���Marco��� and ���Polo��� echoing through the night, and I was in the present and the past at the same time, watching her red hair streaming behind her as she disappeared and reappeared, trying to throw her brother off her trail. I listened, willing myself to remember that moment, knowing that there would be no more swims like this for a while. No more impromptu moonlit mingling with these two precious people I���d birthed.

The world as I know it is about to change, to fall apart into something unknowable before it is reconstructed in its new form. We are heading into the college years that will cocoon her until she is ready to emerge. We don���t know what color or shape her new wings will take. But we know they will be beautiful. And so we wait.

With no imaginary finish lines propelling me through this rebirthing of hers. No expectation of where this race will take her. Take us. For it turns out that all my most treasured memories of her happened while I was waiting on those milestone moments.

When I leave her in New York City on Sunday, I will not wish away the heartache, the tears and the already forming hole in my being. I will remember these words from Buddhist meditation teacher Pema Chodron, ���When things fall apart and we���re on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place where everything is really swell.���

Real trumps swell every time. Even when it hurts. And, it turns out, it wasn���t a race after all.