I am my father’s daughter in a lot of ways. We’re both writers. We’re both musicians. We both love “Seinfeld” and omelets and modern art and Alfred Hitchcock.

I am also my mother’s daughter. We like to argue. She, the litigator, does it more efficiently. We ride bikes. We make guacamole. We love Frank Rich and Bob Dylan and our rabbi.

My sister is the same way. We’re homogenous mixtures of both of our parents, taking stubbornness from Dad, sensitivity from Mom, outspokenness from both.

In the four years that Sydney, my sister, has been at boarding school, my parents and I have gotten very close. We go out to museums and plays and dinners. We ride the subway as a unit, mom knitting hats for babies in Afghanistan, Daddy and I trying to decipher The New York Times Sunday crossword.

We’ve gotten into a routine.

So when I just up and leave for five weeks, our rhythm screeches to a halt. Mom sends me almost hourly e-mails, asking about anyone I’ve talked to, everything I’ve eaten and have I learned anything yet?

Dad waits until he just can’t stand it anymore, and e-mails me guilt trips like “Well, my dear, I assume you're having a great time, since you haven't called me – me, your dad who is verry, verrry, verrry sad you're not around.”

And I love them. I do. It’s just that their separation anxiety doesn’t really make any sense to me. I was home last summer. But besides that, I’ve been gone every summer since I was eight. They seemed to make do just fine when I was at camp for eight weeks. But something is different this summer.

Maybe it’s that I have access to e-mail and a cell phone and they can be in as much contact as they like. Maybe they’re starting to get anxious because they feel like I’m actually in college and they won’t see me for five month stretches at a time.

I decided to solve the mystery myself and just ask my dad what had changed.

He replied: “What's different? You're not a kid anymore, and I appreciate your company. I hope you're having a wonderful time, and a taste of what going away to school will be like. But I think when you do go away to school, you're going to need a guest room for visiting fathers – I'm planning to come out at least every other week.”

For the record, there will be no such guest room. But I’ll let him think that for a while, if it makes him feel better. Being at cherubs, in some ways, has felt like what I imagine college to be like. I live in a dorm. I eat cafeteria food because I’m broke. I write and edit like an anal-retentive fiend. Sometimes I’m too exhausted from working to get dressed in the morning and just go to class in what I’ve slept in. I love it. At the same time, I’m not ready to fully jump in just yet.