Bye-bye Day.

This is what we're doing on Wednesday.... and Thursday... and Friday. We're driving Lumberkid up to college, then, possibly, driving back home alone. I say possibly because there's a chance that we'll just start sleeping outside the gates, unable to let go.

Moving their students in usually takes a few hours. Moving on? Most deans can tell stories of parents who lingered around campus for days. At Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., a mother and father once went to their daughter’s classes on the first day of the semester and trouped to the registrar’s office to change her schedule, recalled Beverly Low, the dean of first-year students.

“We recognize it’s a huge day for families,” she said. Still, during various parent meetings on Colgate’s move-in day, which is Thursday, Ms. Low and other officials plan to drop not-so-subtle hints that “activities for the class of 2014 begin promptly at 4,” she said.

Formal “hit the road” departure ceremonies are unusual but growing in popularity, said Joyce Holl, head of the National Orientation Directors Association. A more common approach is for colleges to introduce blunt language into drop-off schedules specifying the hour for last hugs.

Maybe I'll just enroll; pull a Rodney Dangerfield. I can hear it now, "But Mr Lumber, you already know everything, what could you possibly learn?" So I'm practicing looking less than perfect in the mirror. I might just pull it off.

Anyway, we're off in the morning, so probably there won't be much posting until we come back and the weeping subsides.