Yes, send your daughter to Italy. Alone.
However, leave the red purse and floral umbrella at home.
On December 2, 2016, I backed out of the driveway headed for the rural middle school where I teach language arts. It was 7:02 a.m. My phone rang. I saw it was my daughter. Awfully early to get a call. I wondered whether something was wrong.
“Mom!?”
“Yeah, what’s going on?”
“I got the internship!”
My heart soared. Two months earlier, she had applied for an internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, a modern art museum in Venice, Italy. It would be the education of a lifetime. After all, what classroom could compete with a museum on the Grand Canal?
In less than two months, she would venture to the beautiful floating city to undertake museum duties such as guarding, giving presentations and museum talks, hosting tours, and providing other customer services.
She was beyond excited. So was I, but now that her acceptance was official, it was impossible to imagine her moving to a foreign country and working for three long months away from her home, her language, her friends, her family, her life. The night she received the acceptance email, I lay in bed and cried.