They call it commencement, perhaps deriving from the French word commencement, meaning “at the beginning”. As I and millions of other parents around the globe prepare to face their son or daughter’s high school commencement exercises this week, and a new beginning in their young lives, area drugstores and supermarkets are on high alert that tissue sales will be going through the roof.

It is a day of mixed emotions for a parent, as they must sit in a crowd, lump in throat, tissue in hand, and watch their child walk across the stage and receive their high school graduation diploma. The churning of one’s stomach, the sweaty palms, the racing heart, all very much resemble the symptoms a parent felt when sending off this young child, as though only yesterday, to their first day of kindergarten. If only eighteen years ago, some wise, Italian and perhaps even English-speaking tribe elder could have forewarned me that what seemed to be a long and arduous journey from kindergarten to high school, would pass as quickly as a summer long-weekend, perhaps then, I would have listened.

I’d give anything to be heading off in a fury, just one more morning, to make that Daytona 500-style drive down Mitch Owens Drive, beating the clock to get this young woman to St. Mark High School on time. Please, just one more note to write, about perhaps, her fiftieth eye doctor’s appointment this year, knowing full well, a young woman needs extra sleep during these growing years, and is it so terrible for an over-protective, over-nurturing Italian mother to allow her child this privilege.

Gone are the days of meet the teacher, sharing report cards, and choosing two socks that match, and onward now to meet the employer, sharing car insurance quotes, and choosing electives for university. The days of my young daughter delighting in Barney the purple dinosaur, a pink bike with training wheels and Barbie and Ken, have blindly rolled into a young woman delighting in yoga gear from Lululemon, saving the world from the ravages of global warming, and which series Mazda vehicle will get her more bang for her buck by the litre.

Yes, the road to both man and womanhood is a perilous one, lined with potholes and bumps, and those unexpected twists and turns. This is the day when a parent realizes, they must hand over, not only the car keys, but the steering wheel too, and let their son or daughter take control, all in the hopes that the years of warnings, lectures, lessons, chases from wooden spoons and piffs to the back of the head, somehow sunk in.

Independence, trust, and a push out of the nest to get out and experience the world are exactly what my Italian immigrant parents never dreamed of imposing on their daughters. Instead, possessiveness, over-protectiveness, and fear and worry was more their style of parenting. Independence was a learned behaviour that suddenly happened just after the young bride muttered, “I do”.

Perhaps all this talk of independence and letting go is simply a modern North American concept, and the entire community knows I wasn’t raised that way. Why mom and pop are still very much enmeshed in my life - I can’t leave the safe confines of Ottawa without their permission, and still fear a good old fashioned Italian scolding, although I’m fast approaching 40! Maybe reverting back to the “Italy 1959” style of parenting that I was raised in could provide the answers to lessen my anxieties, while at the same time increase my daughter’s anxieties that the world is an enormously huge and dangerous place, and she must remain in desperate need of her “Ma” right by her side. Perhaps even until long after she is married, a mother, and retired for that matter. Good grief! Am I suddenly becoming a parent just like my own Italian parents were, or even more disturbing – still are?

Independence versus co-dependence - I wonder what Dr. Phil would think.