After three months of my daughter being away at school I’m excited for the reunion, and assume she feels the same. So we settle into our convent (a story for another time), text her without success, and head off to catch her before she goes into her first class. We can’t enter the building because we are not students and the posted guards feel this is sufficient justification to delay us making Lydia’s day with our presence. We accost students entering the building to see if they know Lydia and can tell her we are outside. Having moved up on the guards’ “suspicious characters watch list,” we decide to hike over to her dorm, which is, of course, guarded.

We negotiate hard to redeem our daughter and surrender our passports, a DNA sample, and the promise of our next child. (Ha! We’re done having children. We win). Soon we are presented with a disheveled ragamuffin still in her pajamas and only half awake. I guess the whole “need to be reunited” thing is more parental than student.