For a moment I am back at that place of long ago. It is his first day of preschool. He is wearing blue Mickey Mouse sneakers and a cowlick that has swirled his hair into a hint of early rebellion. When I leave him at the door, his chin quivers. Eyes search for welcome, for familiar space. When he cries with those heart-wracking, body-heaving sobs of anger and hurt, his face turns a furious red.

Was it that long ago? Surely not. Then again, it has also seemed like forever and a day.

Child number four has grown up. Sometimes. In some ways. When it suits him.

I know this because we have launched into the expected -- and some would say long-awaited -- ritual of separation. Bank account at the ready, we are preparing for his senior year of high school. Let the spending, and the joy, and the tears, and the heartaches, begin.

In the spirit of this declaration of (almost) independence, I accompany him to the appointment for his senior class portrait. No Mickey Mouse sneakers this time, but the cowlick insists on having its way. No crying either, but a sullen scowl has pushed aside the quivering chin.

He is wearing a suit, a solid back that emphasizes his thick football player's neck while setting off the softness still on his cheeks. He has outgrown the sleeves of his white shirt. His striped blue tie looks more like a hangman's noose. Yet, there he sits, ready to be molded into a picture that will hang on my wall, a frozen-in-the-moment reminder of someone passing through but not there yet

For a moment I wonder what will be his next official portrait. College graduation certainly. Marriage perhaps. Promotion. Maybe chairmanship of who knows what. During those years, where will I be? What role will I play?

I find all this vaguely familiar: this sense of pride and dismay, this need to push away and hold close, this urge to admire and correct. With his older brothers, I labeled it the almost-man phase. With him, there is also an undercurrent of relief. Too much alike, too fierce in our ways, we butt heads.

The senior class picture is the first in a lengthy ritual that will culminate, for me at least, when he packs his bags to leave for college. It is the mid-summer launch pad for a year of extraordinary expenses. Before long, I will be dishing out money for admission applications, for a yearbook, for grad night. He, in turn, will be negotiating for parental subsidies to finance homecoming and prom. (My policy: I'll spring for the graduation announcements, but he has to come up with his own entertainment budget.)

Letting go, sending off has come to that. In a sense, and some might disagree, it is a way of buying ourselves out of a beloved bondage. After all, viewed dispassionately, senior year is now its own self-sustaining economy, one that caters to our guilt as well as to our fear. They're how old already? What did I miss out on? Will they be ready for life?

By the time the first bars of Pomp and Circumstance play in the auditorium early next summer, I'll have done most of what I can do as a parent. For better or for worse.

In the meantime, I will prepare for the inevitable -- one portrait and gown and yearbook ad at a time.

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