Do you have everything?

My daughter is packing to leave for college. She has a list. It includes laundry detergent, 78 different types of conditioner, a 1500 CD case, notebooks, hangers (I didn’t know she knew what these were), phone chargers, i-pod chargers, charger chargers, enough underwear so she never has to use the laundry detergent, dry-erase markers, a wastebasket (ditto the hangers) and about 500 other items essential to success in the pursuit of a baccalaureate degree.

Meanwhile, there are things I wanted to tell her for the last 17 years but may have forgotten. They come to me fast and frequently, on waking in the middle of the night, or while driving, or walking the dog. I make notes to tell her. Or I forget to make notes.

She joined us reluctantly for dinner recently at a restaurant and only ordered a Shirley Temple. “Oh, you’re on the sugar diet,” the young waitress said, approvingly. Aha! A teaching moment, I thought. “Remember, I told her, “every day you need to eat a fruit, a vegetable, a protein and some whole grain.” Listen up, girl. I’m not paying $16,000 a year for the college meal plan so you can go on the sugar diet. (I always suspected she picked this school for its frozen yogurt machine.)

I worry, too, that she will forget to clean the hair from the drain after showering. Why do I worry about this? Perhaps it is because I have never gone into a shower after her without having to clean the hair from the shower drain. But she assures me this will not happen in college. I suspect it will not happen more than once in college because I know what dorm-mates are like. They do things like stuff your bed with crawling things if they want to teach you a lesson. Whereas mothers just wag their fingers and clean up your messes for you.

How will she manage, I wonder, to live in a room no bigger than her own room at home, with two other girls? I can’t even navigate from the door to the closet of her room most days without picking up a relic of her childhood along with cereal bowls and strewn clothing.

When she was eight years old we wrote a song together, called “The Messy Room Blues.” One verse, of about 23, goes like this: “I open the closet, to look for a toy, what do you know, I find the neighbor boy. Oh, Mama, I got the messy room blues!”

Necessities I have packed for her include a B-complex vitamin (to be taken at mealtime), Vitamin C drops to be taken at the first sign of a cold (or any time), the Irish tea she drinks at home, Annie’s microwaveable Mac & Cheese, instant cocoa and allergy pills. I’m guessing the B and the C will still be unopened when we pick her up in May, whereas the Annie’s & the Swiss Miss will require frequent re-stocking.

A few nights ago, while shopping online with her for winter boots, she had a meltdown. My husband, who has managed to remain clueless about mothers and daughters over seven decades, thought it was about the shoes. But I knew better.

After letting her drench her pillow while fireworks bathed Beijing, I joined her in her room. She was sad, she said, about leaving her friends, her high school, her brother. She was afraid of the challenges ahead. “I’ll probably just drop out like everybody else,” she worried, spiking my blood pressure with thoughts of student loans being called in prematurely.

I told her I was proud of her, proud of the fact that she feels so deeply, loves so deeply, thinks so deeply. And proud that she forges on, even when she is so afraid. Then, I did what I always did when she needed to rest. I brought her a glass of water and a warm washcloth and kissed her goodnight. As I made my way across the messy room, to her door, I realized that was what I meant to tell her all along.

I think she has everything she needs now.