Casual

...that sooner rather than later, they're gone and you're history...

...As a child happily bombarded with American popular culture, I was fascinated by this staple of the national experience...

...And yet I know already that, as we return to our three-fifths empty house that night, the gnawing anxiety in our minds will be a different one...

...They've come away skilled in tennis and music and modeling animals with left-over household objects...

...Nervous, first of all, about the simple practicalities of handing our precious progeny over to somebody else's full-time care...

...Parenthood is a wrenching business at the best of times...

...But when your children are foreigners, too, there can be a painful sense of estrangement...

...Secretly, disgracefully, I want that tearful telephone call halfway through the first week that begs me to come and collect them...

...More nervous, of course, about the very idea of our children being two weeks away from the comforting rituals of home and doting parents, not to mention two younger sisters who will wonder where all the noise and energy have gone...

...What on earth will Eliza do if she loses her irreplaceable teddy...

...But now we stand on the brink of their biggest leap yet into this country's irresistible culture, and we are, like all parents at this moment, distinctly nervous...

...Will Claudia's insistence on demonstrating to those around her a flawless, alphabetical-order command of all 50 state capitals prove too much for even the most patient counselor...

...That this first giant step into the vast intimidating world beyond our doors will be remembered by them as a liberation, not an exile...

...We've looked on in pride and wonder as they've eagerly waded into the cultural singularities of this country: the repeated graduations— I've attended six already, and not one of the girls is out of elementary school— the great seasonal holidays, from Halloween and Thanksgiving, through Presidents' Day, to the Fourth of July when, decked out in their red, white, and blue, they guilelessly celebrate the greatest defeat in English history...

...And I know too that this episode will be only the first intimation of the ultimate tragedy of parenthood...

...We've learned, by trial and error, to refer to them collectively not as "Children," but as "You Guys...

...But next week we'll be crossing yet another Rubicon on their route out of our little English home...

...We've sat politely while our English pronunciation was corrected and occasionally mocked...

...Will preteen Kitty simply find the whole swimming and boating and fishing and singing thing just too far beneath her advanced years...

...What deep psychological scars might this abandonment of helpless children leave...

...Tableaux of kids singing around the campfire collided in my mind with the lyrics of Allan Sherman's parody "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh," to produce a confused image somewhere between a never-ending outdoor birthday party and an especially austere prisoner-of-war camp...

...I'm terrified that they won't miss Sally and me at all...

...So as I kiss them a tearful farewell next weekend and watch them run off to start the first phase of their independence, I'll take some comfort in the words of C. Day Lewis, who captured the pathos of the moment when his son ventured off the same way for the first time: I have had worse partings, but none that so Gnaws at my mind still Perhaps it is roughly Saying what God alone could perfectly show— How selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in the letting go...

...We've gulped as little right hands have shot to the breast during the playing of the "Star Spangled Banner" at sporting events...

...What if they simply can't take the homesickness...

...What if they really, really like it...

...There's no cure for this, I know...

...I've heard the horror stories of children desperately grabbing on to rearview mirrors as parents' cars pull mournfully out of the parking lot...

...I dread the goodbyes next Sunday...

...As much as we love this country and admire what it stands for, it has been jarring at times to watch our little English roses grow steadily into proud flora of a distinctly American species...

...GERARD BAKER...

...My girls have done plenty of day camps before...

...The Big Three—Kitty, 11, Claudia, 9, and Eliza, 7—will head off for their first ever trip to sleep-away camp...

...I want to be able to rush off in the middle of the night on a mercy mission to retrieve them and in an instant be transformed into the hero-father I never could be otherwise...

...Casual GERRY'S KIDS As English parents of five young girls who've lived almost their entire lives in these United States, my wife and I have spent much of the last decade checking off the rites of passage on their journey towards full immersion in American life...

...Did Abu Musab al Zarqawi's parents send him to sleep-away camp...

...That they won't really want to leave camp and come home...