Letting go when your son starts a new life abroad

Watching him move to the same country where I attended university, I felt a strange symmetry of time.

- Selena Ling

When the plane touched down on a cool autumn morning, I felt a quiet shiver of recognition.

The air carried the same damp crispness I remembered from decades ago, when I first arrived in this very country as a student. I had been young, uncertain, eager to carve out my own independent life beyond home.

Now, 30-odd years later, I was back — not as a student, but as a parent, accompanying my son to begin his own chapter in a land that had once shaped me.

There was a symmetry to it all that felt almost poetic. Lugging suitcases stuffed with winter clothing, medicine and instant noodles with the same mixture of excitement and nerves, the same anticipation of a life waiting to unfold.

Only this time, it was not mine. Looking at my son, now taller than me, I felt a tug of both pride and nostalgia. The roles had reversed. I was now the parent learning to let go.

Our first few days together blurred into errands, preparations and waiting. We shopped for bedding and groceries, set up his small student room, navigated unfamiliar streets, and figured out the quirks of the town. We fiddled around with washing machine and dryer settings and decided which duvet to buy.

All this felt ordinary yet momentous. These were the invisible rituals of growing up, the mundane scaffolding upon which university life in a foreign land quietly rests.

I found myself observing him with quiet reflection. He spoke excitedly about meeting new friends, exploring nearby towns and travelling to further destinations. Watching him handle the details of his new life - budgeting, organising, setting up his study corner — I saw a young man standing at the threshold of independence. There was joy in that realisation, but also an ache — the tender ache every parent must feel when witnessing their child’s first steps into a life that no longer revolves around them.