On a college visit with my son it hit me: He's leaving. He's ready. And I'm not.

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I was in the rental car, parked a block from a university we were visiting, when it hit: He’s leaving.

We had just finished lunch at a salad place off campus, me and the kid who used to detest anything that resembled a vegetable, the one who, somehow, with maddening swiftness, grew older and taller and became a most-of-the-time vegetarian.

My eyes filled with tears, my chest and jaw tightened. It was lousy timing, and I knew it. He’s next to me trying to figure out if this is the place, if this is where he can see himself the next four years. He didn’t need me breaking down bawling, thinking about the little dude who, when he was a baby and we lived on the first floor of a rented Chicago two-flat, would spend hours napping on my chest as I sat motionless, afraid the slightest move might wake him.

They're moving on

In that rental car near the umpteenth university we had visited over the past year, I felt what parents across the country are feeling this month as their kids – the ones who once napped on their chests – finish high school and prepare to move on. To college. To a job. To a gap year. To something new.

It’s the end of a chapter, for the kids and for us, and the start of new pages that will lead them, inevitably, away.

My wife has felt these emotions throughout our son’s time looking at and applying to colleges. I, being less wise, had not faced the truth, so when it finally hit, at the most inopportune moment, it hit hard: He’s leaving. He’s ready. And I’m not.

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I looked at him in the passenger seat – self-assured, excited, grown – and saw the curious, knee-high kid who once gripped my hand on a walk through the zoo in search of an okapi, an animal he heard about that looks like a cross between a deer and a zebra. (We found it.)

I saw his love for the piano born when he realized he could plink the “Star Wars” theme song long before his feet could reach the pedals.

A crashing wave of memories

I saw – in a crashing wave of memories – every just-home-from-work hug, every milestone, every success and stumble, and every iteration of a face and a smile I have seen almost every day for 18 years.

I’ve never tried to hide my tears from him. I want him to know it’s not just good but important to cry, to release what you’re feeling inside, to never fall into the dullard’s trap of thinking masculinity is defined by throttling emotions to look tough.

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But I held the tears back in that moment – and in the car ride to the airport for the flight home, and at the airport, and on the plane – because, as parents, we default to helping our kids, and seeing me melt into a puddle of goo in those particular moments wasn’t going to help him.

There will be ample time – he’ll see my tears. He’ll have no doubt how proud I am of him, how happy I am for him and how sad I am to see him go. But for now, for parents like me at this stage of life, the best we can do for our kids is what we’ve always done: Shepherd them from one stage to another; be there for them; love them unconditionally; guide them to make good decisions while giving them room to make their own mistakes.

On flights when I was a kid, right before takeoff, my mom would hold my hand and, as the engines roared and the airplane began to move along the runway, we’d tap our clasped hands rhythmically and start a slow, soft chant of “faster … and faster … and faster.” The cadence sped up with the plane – “… faster and faster and faster andfasterandfasterandfaster …” – until the wheels left the ground and we declared, “Fastest!” 

Comfort in a shared tradition

I still do that, saying the words in my head, of course, and discreetly tapping my hand on my knee. It makes me think, fondly, of my mom.

I carried that tradition on with my kids.

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Aboard the flight home, as we began to speed along the runway, earthbound only a brief time more, I tapped my right hand on my right knee as always. Then I looked down and noticed my son’s left hand on his left knee, doing exactly the same as he stared out the window. 

My tears could wait for another time. This time was his.

Faster … and faster … and faster …

Follow Paste BN columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook: facebook.com/RexIsAJerk