I'm not looking forward to the new school year. The only looking I'm doing these days is backward, as in living in the past. For the first time in 18 years my wife and I won't be sending off at least one of our three kids to a neighborhood public school here in Sebastopol. Our two older kids, Guy and Valerie, have been away at college for several years now, after spending their formative years at Park Side, Pine Crest, Brook Haven, and Analy.

Soon our 16-year old son, Willie, will be leaving Analy to spend his junior year in Lecco, Italy, as a participant in the international Rotary Youth Exchange program. We won't see Willie again until August of 2008.

Before I get into my little personal pity party here, let me express my sincere and heartfelt appreciation to the Rotary Club of Sebastopol for making this wonderful opportunity possible. Thanks to our local Rotarians and their counterparts in Italy, my son is getting ready for the greatest educational and cultural growth experience of his life.

And I'm getting ready to cry. Well, it won't be that bad. At least I keep telling myself that.

I'm starting to suffer from the early onset of what is commonly called the empty nest syndrome. The children have grown and left home.

There is, of course, a positive way of looking at this very natural, inevitable, and heart breaking development. The positive view is that all the young family members have grown up and become strong enough to fly away and thrive on their own.

But, let's face it, that's for the birds. “Empty nest” sounds suspiciously like “emptiness,” which is what I'm feeling these days. I'm hardly alone in these feelings. Every parent faces the empty nest, sooner or later. You see it coming, but it catches you completely unprepared. I find solace in nostalgia, which, as they say, isn't what it used to be.

I look out at my backyard and recall my kids playing Wiffle Ball out there many summers ago. Doran Bacigalupi, Megin Tonelli, Michael Thomas, and other neighborhood friends would come over to play, and the games would stretch for hours on end. The kids would pitch to each other, whap the plastic ball around with a plastic bat, circle the bases, score runs, and keep elaborate records of the results in a spiral notebook. Sometimes the dog would dart out and snatch the Wiffle Ball in the middle of a play, taking off with it like a wild pinch runner as the kids gave chase. Joyous shouts and laughter filled the air.

I remember hearing my older son refer to these backyard games as “A B B baseball.” I asked him what he meant by “A B B.” He gave me a serious look befitting a 12-year-old with something important to say. “A B B” is just an abbreviation for the word “abbreviation,” he explained, so A B B baseball is just abbreviated baseball.

Yes. How could I have not known that? In all my years of parenthood this remains the simplest and deepest explanation I ever heard of the ways of children. There are games within games, and it's all a matter of scale. And having fun.

As fall approaches, the days seem a little abbreviated. I'm feeling a little abbreviated myself. The shorter the time, the longer the yearning for those days when the children were home and life itself seemed like an endless season in the sun.

It all goes by in a flash, but the warmth remains.