What's it like to be 23 and starting a new life? I'm unloading a lot of feelings as my kid heads to the US

Can he really be that old? Was I ever that young? A trip to clear out his trainee flat has actually brought back so many memories

There's an accurate, if snide, thing I have actually seen online that reads "No moms and dad on Facebook can think their child has actually turned any age", and yes, OK, not the "on Facebook" bit, but there is a rote awe sometimes passing that I in some cases slip into, contemplating my . But, allow me, simply this as soon as, a Facebook parent minute. My older kid turned 23 last month and we've just been to London to gather his stuff at the end of his degree. En route, I realised I was 23 when I moved there myself.

You can't often pre-emptively identify parenting "lasts", however when you can, they're weird and melancholy - even when they're not, objectively, things an individual would pick to do again. This journey involved (I hope) my last time standing, hips shrieking from the drive, texting "We're outside" as we waited for our kid to get up (my partner ended up tossing a ball at his bed room window). It was certainly my last time eliminating my shoes amid the overruning bins of that sticky-floored trainee home, and hovering over the Trainspotting-esque toilet then choosing versus drying my hands on any of the towels. It ended with the last journey along the M1 squished between a salvaged chair, a duvet and an Ikea bag of pans threatening to behead me if we made an emergency situation stop. We were bringing his things "home" understanding that it will not be home for him in the very same method once again: he's transferring to New York this summer season. Maybe not for ever, but for years, not months.

To intensify the Big Feelings, and the sense of the excessive slippage of time, my hubby and I used the trip to wander round Fitzrovia, where we shared our very first flat back when I was 23. It's different however not unrecognisable: the healthcare facility has actually been destroyed but Tesco is growing; the Phones 4U where we purchased our very first mobiles is gone; but the bank where we opened Isas when they were created, proud of our brand-new maturity, hangs on. Our block had actually acquired numerous Airbnb secret safes but was otherwise the same. "It'll be baking up there," said my spouse, staring up as the late afternoon sun struck the flat black roof. I made him duplicate himself, because I have actually ended up being a little deaf this year, then we reminisced about the brutal summer heat (it's probably even worse now). We strolled around, explaining survivors: the notoriously low-cost pizza location, the small Italian sandwich shop, the DIY store where we stress bought a fan. Then we sat down for a reasonable soda, due to the fact that we were exhausted and I was struck by an ultra site-specific memory of walking through Percy Passage to satisfy him one night, having actually just found I was pregnant with our now-23-year-old, enjoying the last seconds of incredulous solo joy before sharing the news. Then another: shuffling along Goodge Street at dawn in labour, stopping outside Spaghetti House (still there) to ride out a contraction. Both our boys were born in this neighbourhood - it altered my life like no other.

The place still felt familiar; what 23 seemed like is more difficult to access. I was a mess, I believe: I had been ill and was very narcissistic; I spent far too much time stressing over my weight. I spent little bit, if any, time fretting about the world, however. World-wise, things felt great - "A new dawn has broken, has it not?" Tony Blair had actually simply told us - and if they weren't, it definitely didn't feel like my issue.

There aren't many brand-new dawn vibes for my kid's generation as they enter adulthood. I'm uncertain we've provided them much of a chance to invest a few self-absorbed years focusing on their own dramas, have we? We have actually talented them more pushing matters: a collapsing climate, disastrous economic inequality, a lousy tasks market and even the reemerging spectre of fascism and nuclear war (retro!). Plus, it's all inescapably fed into their faces 24/7 - not a feature offered by a 1997 Phones 4U Motorola.

But I hope, even so, that 23 can still be what it was for me: confusing but loaded with possibility. An experience. The ideal age to find yourself in a brand-new city.