This fall, my wife and I will officially earn the title of “empty nesters.” Our son, a senior in high school, will head off to college, leaving the house as quiet as it has ever been since 2003. Granted, with his older sister already in her third year at school in Chicago, we’ve had some practice. We even got good at the distance thing—though I’ll admit, I’m secretly (and not so secretly) hoping he chooses a school that doesn’t require a TSA pat-down to visit.

This is not the first time I’ve written about him here. Years ago, I called him my hero. When he was little, he lost all hearing in one ear. He adapted faster than his mother and I did—a resilient kid then and now. He never let it slow him down. While I spent much of my childhood avoiding word problems in math class, he has always had an engineer’s brain.

I should have known when he was four. Our vacuum cleaner broke, and one afternoon I walked into the family room to find it scattered in pieces across the floor with my son squatting in the middle like a pint-sized mechanic. I asked my wife why she let him dismantle it. She calmly replied, “Because he said he could fix it.” As I started to explain why that was a terrible idea, the vacuum roared back to life. Lesson learned: Never underestimate him.

Text: Jeffrey Cohen