I knew it was inevitable, but that didn’t stop me from feeling panicked. My daughter was going to college. “Mom, hurry up, what’s taking you so long?” Elissa said, standing by the front door, her suitcase in hand.

She hadn’t had any breakfast. “Mom, I’m not hungry. Let’s go,” she said. “Tinker” the dog kept licking her face as if he knew she was leaving. On her 10th birthday, Elissa had woken up to find this brown, fluffy-haired dog lying on her bed. They became constant companions.

The dog would get so excited when she came home from school, he’d jump up and down begging for a treat. A neighbor promised to take care of “Tinker” until I came back.

Dousing my coffee in the sink, I reluctantly grabbed the car keys. Two heavy boxes, containing nearly everything Elissa owned, were stored in the backseat. I took the wheel. Neither of us spoke for the longest time. Finally, I broke the silence.

“I’m going to miss you terribly,” I said. “Mom, you’ll be fine. You have so many friends. Maybe you’ll meet someone special.” I shrugged. Those weren’t the words I wanted to hear.

When we reached a viewpoint at Mount Shasta, Elissa climbed into the driver’s seat. “Don’t take those curves too fast,” I warned her. She sped off. Tightening my seat belt, I knew it was useless to say anything. Elissa had a mind of her own, an eloquent mind like her father.

Elissa had been the center of my life since the day she was born. I adored her. Every time she did something new, like learning to tie her tennis shoes, I’d buy something special, a book or a doll.

I was astounded to see her overalls covered with paint after I picked her from preschool at the Jewish Community Center. I asked her teacher what happened. Elissa had gotten so excited drawing me a picture, she hadn’t noticed the smudges on her clothes.

“She’s such a delightful child, so adventurous and imaginative,” her teacher said. Where had the time gone? Wasn’t it just yesterday when I had gone to her swim meets, her piano recitals? Taken her to Israel to meet her father and shown her Jerusalem, the city of her birth?

Now our time together was drifting away like the sand on the beach. In a few short days, she’d be on her own. And unfortunately, so would I.

I had urged Elissa to choose a college outside of Oregon, not wanting to inhibit her life the way my mother had. She was always checking up on me, wanting to know where I’d been, who my friends were. Never trusting me to make my own decisions, questioning me all the time until I couldn’t take it any longer and moved out.

Elissa deserved her freedom, unencumbered by me who wanted to control her life. “You need to go away to college. Find your own identity. Figure out what you want to do in life. I don’t want you feeling trapped like I did,” I said.

We had done the college circuit tour the year before, visiting the campuses of Pomona College, Scripps College, Occidental College and Santa Clara University. She chose Santa Clara, a Catholic school in northern California. As I pulled into the parking lot, we looked at each other. She looked glorious. A cold sweat ran down my face. I helped her unload, carrying the boxes to her dorm room.

“Don’t get too religious, I don’t want to see you reciting a rosary,” I said, joking. “Mom, you know me better than that,” she said. I drove home the next morning, expecting to hear my daughter’s voice on my answering machine. But there were no messages. My heart ached.

Fumbling through my purse, I found the crumpled piece of paper where she had scrawled her new phone number and picked up the receiver. “No,” I told myself slamming it down. “I need to let her be.”

Walking into her bedroom, I opened the blinds. Everything was gone. Her clothes, all her makeup, her boombox. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her teddy bear. It was lying on her bed, its beady eyes smiling at me. I cuddled it in my arms, crying softly. The yellow and white fur around its nose had long ago worn away.

The teddy bear had been a gift from my mother along with a pink frilly dress, a polka-dot sleeper and diapers. When I’d lay Elissa in her crib as a baby, I’d wind a key so that the bear could play a soothing lullaby. Soon, it became her timeless possession.

She had left the bear to comfort me. Soon, the phone rang. “Mom, are you okay? I haven’t heard from you and was worried something might have happened,” she said on the other line.

I thought she had been too busy to call. “Mom, you’ll always be in my life. I love you,” she said. I took a deep breath. My daughter was hundreds of miles away, yet we still shared a special bond.

When Elissa came home the following summer, I was thrilled. We spent several hours sorting through her old clothes and books in the garage. Tucked underneath her Sunset High School yearbook was the teddy bear. “Remember this?” I said, dusting it off. I gave it back to her to keep. “It’s yours now. A token of my love.”