This morning my children walked to school together alone, and this afternoon they will walk home together without me.

They are eight and ten and I suppose they are ready, but I am not.

I did not expect to be a helicopter parent. I am not particularly precious about children in general, and I don’t think I was with my own in their early years. I let them climb trees and wrestle around the sharp corners of the coffee table. I know how important it is for children to experience independence and competence.

And yet here I am: barely able to tolerate the anxiety of having them walk the two blocks to school together. My mother suggested that my ten-year-old should walk to the library himself to pick up his books on hold and I almost had a heart attack at the very suggestion.

Parenting is the art of letting go, and I am very, very bad at letting go of the things I love.

The first time I saw a therapist was when my parents were getting divorced. I wasn’t familiar with the term “woo woo” at the time, but that is the correct way to describe her. Even at eight years old I was skeptical of her methods, but one of her weird little projects has stuck with me.

“Draw a picture in your head,” she told me. “Draw a picture of something you want to remember about your family before the divorce and then I’ll show you how you can keep it forever.” She directed me to imagine myself locking away this picture in a safe deep in my brain. I could get it out and look at it any time.

The picture was of my family around the table: Dad, Mom, my sister and brother, and our neurotic little dog on the floor nearby. I still have it, locked away in the safe in my brain, and I still do take it out and look at it from time to time.

I didn’t get many years of intact nuclear family life as a child, and the years I remember best are punctuated by my parents’ late-night yelling, the early cannon fire of divorce proceedings to follow. So right here, right now, this family is it: this is my one big chance to experience the happy nuclear family. One mom, one dad, two kids, two cats. The yelling is limited. All the holidays are spent all together.

I am not saying that I love my children or my family more than other people love theirs. But I suspect that my friends, who mostly all come from intact nuclear families, are less frightened of losing what they currently have. I know people who are really looking forward to when their kids go off to sleepaway camp and then to college. I know parents who plan child-free vacations to Florida every year. I cannot bring myself to plan even one weekend away from the kids. My oldest went to sleepaway camp for a week this year and I hated it.

I’m tightening my grip on this time when what I should be is letting go. Let them grow up and move on. Let them have lives outside of the family. Let them walk to the library alone.

But that also means I have to put another picture in the safe. And I don’t want to.