Today is my daughter’s birthday! (This is where you clap and cheer.) She’s 22.

I admit that as I write, we’re having a bit of a choppy morning. I don’t always swim so well in these waters of parenting young adults. We’ve had some raised voices and tears. But we will sort it out.

She always asks for potato pancakes for her birthday dinner. She doesn’t want to go out. She doesn’t want to get fancy. She wants me to make potato pancakes and then probably some sort of cheesecake dessert.

Despite a morning where we weren’t quite in sync with each other, I’m immensely proud of my daughter. She’s been working full time and going to college mostly full time for four years now. I’m proud of her diligence, her ambition, her perseverance, her awareness of her gifting. The end is in sight, educationally, and she will really be ready to launch. I can’t wait to see how her life unfolds, and I hope it brings her some measure of the joy she brings me every single day.

In the meantime, I’ve got some potatoes to mash.