Little girl, I have good news and bad news.

Bad news: I will never do your laundry again. Not even if you move back home between semesters. Not even if you break both your arms. Now that you are an adult it is time you knew, there is no laundry fairy. It is me. It has always been me and you need to understand that beneath this 44-year-old chest beats the heart of a young person who hates doing laundry just as much as you do, now.

And speaking of clothes, I will also not be purchasing underwear for you. Never again since you started buying those fantastical, lacy little bits of nothing which would give your dad a heart attack if he ever did laundry. Which he does not. That’s good news for you, but not so great for me.

On a brighter note, I will try, oh so very hard, to keep this stubby little nose out of things that are not my business. Once you leave my house, I will add you to my own, personal “framily” plan; if I wouldn’t say it to a friend, I won’t say it to you, my family. So if you come home and proceed to drink 1.5 litters of Pepsi 15 minutes before bedtime…well, mums the word. Dad agrees. Just know you are KILLING us, silently, in our hearts, with your disregard for your health. And if I sigh, dramatically, and lay prone on the couch, a pillow over my eyes so I do not have to witness you give yourself diabetes, remember that you are our eldest and we are unskilled at having adult children, thus prone to both mistakes and hysterics.

Other good news; feel free to leave your clothes everywhere, all the time. It is your roommate’s problem, not mine. Punch away on your phone all you want. It is not my business if you burn through texts like popcorn at the movies and give yourself astigmatism staring at that tiny screen all day and night. 

Bad news; you’ll be needing to find your own phone plan.

But the best news, the very best news, is now that I don’t have to concern myself with any of it- with your laundry, your tidiness, your grades, or whether you made it to school on time- I get to just enjoy you without having to teach you a blessed thing. And that is wonderful news for me. Because you are funny and thoughtful and energetic and smart. You are wonderful company and I am looking forward to having such a stellar woman in my life. Just my rotten luck that you have to go and move out of state to make it happen.

And that is the worst news of all.