This weekend was Move-in Day for both colleges my sons are attending. I hate those colleges right now because I had to give my sons away to them.

I keep remembering when The Wife was pregnant. Such a tiny girl to carry twins. By the end, she was almost as tall lying down as standing up. And I was there for all of it. And it didn’t seem real.

And then the time came, and we had to go to the hospital, and it was a bit dramatic, but it didn’t seem real. It felt kind of like a movie I had seen before. A romantic comedy of some kind. Starring us.

And then my first son arrived. He had spun himself around, requiring a C-section, so he came out butt first. That’s how I knew he was mine. And a tsunami of reality hit me — HE. WAS. SO. REAL. So absolutely real that the nurse had to nudge me to remind me to take pictures.

And then his brother made his entrance, three feet of hair preceding this tiny Italian face. Tsunami again. OH MY GOD. SO REAL.

And life was never the same again. My thinking radically changed, I began to evolve, slowly,The Wife will attest, but all of my growth was about them.

And isn’t that the case with all parents? We recenter our lives around them. Even failing parents fail in terms of their kids. But most of us do okay, and we do so because we live for them.

And then some college takes them away? And we have to pay exorbitant sums for the privilege of having them empty our lives? The bastards!

Who is going to inform me about every sport imaginable first thing in the morning and late at night? That guy is at college now. Who is going to look at me deadpan and say, “What?” to anything I ask him to do? That guy is at college now, too.

Who is The Wife going to make waffles for? Or reheat leftover pasta in the pan because he’s too good for the microwave? Those guys are eating college food now.

We prepared for months, bought sheets and towels and text books and a trunk. But it didn’t seem real. Then came this weekend. And it all happened so suddenly. All at once, IT IS SO REAL that they are gone, off to college, and we find ourselves in a new reality.

i keep getting hit with waves of realization that it will never again be the way it was just two days ago. Never. Our babies are gone. Our men are at college. And we have to find out who we are all over again.

Weird how life shifts like that, isn’t it?

Christopher Ryan is author of City of Woe, available on Kindle and Nook, and in print. For more info, click here.