Hey b_b thanks, for your thoughtful leap. I originally answered humanodon via pm, but since seeing your comment, let's see how your attempt at an explanation matches my answer:

Why heartrending? because your post points to how helpless parents are. We bring up kids to be creative and independent at our own peril - but the alternative, bringing up kids to be helpless and dependent is worse. It's heartrending in the way the last lines from My Dinner with Andre always seem to get to me:

"Well, have a real relationship with a person that goes on for years - That's completely unpredictable. Then you've cut off all your ties to the land, and you're sailing into the unknown...into uncharted seas. I mean, you know, people hold on to these images of father, mother, husband, wife... again for the same reason - 'cause they seem to provide some firm ground. But there's no wife there. What does that mean? A wife. A husband. A son. A baby holds your hands... and then suddenly there's this huge man lifting you off the ground...and then he's gone. Where's that son?"

We can't really protect our kids because they have to have lives of their own. galen is already straining the leash. Another year or two, and his mom will be lucky if he phones once a week.

Let me tell you how pathetic it is to be a mom: I figured out that if I played Facebook scrabble with my daughter, I'd know that she was still alive.

She works a midnight shift in the suburbs on "Upper Middle Road." Trust me, any place called Upper Middle anything is in the upper middle of nowhere, and on nights when there are no late buses, she rides her bike six km from the the train station.

I don't want to bug her with texts and email - but at least when she makes her scrabble word, I know she's still alive.