1. There’s nothing you can do. You’re a hull for your children’s lives. Congratulations again.
2. Ask your daughter how she’s doing in a cheerful, not grating, not judging, yet not enabling tone.
3. Ask your daughter where she spent the night last night.
4. Ask your daughter how the saving is going.
5. Eat jalapeño cheese puffs alone in your office while watching the good BBC version of Sense and Sensibility, not the just okay Hollywood one.
6. Envy the everyday leisure of the faded gentry.
7. 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.
8. Ask your daughter if she is aware of how late in the day it is.
9. Ask your daughter if she has a plan yet. Any kind of plan. How’s that going?
10. Don’t look at Facebook. Don’t do it. You don’t need to see any of that.
11. All your friends’ fucking “regular” kids going off to college, smiling. Told you not to look, dummy!
12. Try to remember how nonconformist you were when you were 19. Be reasonable.
13. But you had a full-time job. You supported yourself. Didn’t you? Actually kind of hard to remember.
14. Okay, so you were kind of a fuckup. It just looked different.
15. But you’re not that fucked up now! Are you?
16. 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?
17. Have a moment of uncomplicated love with your cat. At least she loves you. Probably.
18. Still nothing you can do. Still just a hull. Is there something poetic about this?
19. Have a Popsicle.

Illustration by Sarah Letteney