- There’s nothing you can do. You’re a hull for your children’s lives. Congratulations again.
- Ask your daughter how she’s doing in a cheerful, not grating, not judging, yet not enabling tone.
- Ask your daughter where she spent the night last night.
- Ask your daughter how the saving is going.
- Eat jalapeño cheese puffs alone in your office while watching the good BBC version of Sense and Sensibility, not the just okay Hollywood one.
- Envy the everyday leisure of the faded gentry.
- Idly wish marrying your child off to a rich captain or even a poor man of the cloth were still an option. Maybe it is—you should explore this.
- Ask your daughter if she is aware of how late in the day it is.
- Ask your daughter if she has a plan yet. Any kind of plan. How’s that going?
- Don’t look at Facebook. Don’t do it. You don’t need to see any of that.
- All your friends’ fucking “regular” kids going off to college, smiling. Told you not to look, dummy!
- Try to remember how nonconformist you were when you were 19. Be reasonable.
- But you had a full-time job. You supported yourself. Didn’t you? Actually kind of hard to remember.
- Okay, so you were kind of a fuckup. It just looked different.
- But you’re not that fucked up now! Are you?
- Go for more cheese puffs but turns out someone has eaten all of them except for three and then put the bag back in the cupboard. I mean, come on. Aren’t we all grownups here?
- Have a moment of uncomplicated love with your cat. At least she loves you. Probably.
- Still nothing you can do. Still just a hull. Is there something poetic about this?
- Have a Popsicle.

Illustration by Sarah Letteney