The goodbye year

"Every September, some mommy's "baby" starts her senior year of high school. For many women, a child's senior year is the first serious look back on the past eighteen. Every event (from Halloween to Mother's Day) will be The Last Time. Mixed in with all the melancholy is the ever-present and stress-filled "now" of the senior year--college applications. The Goodbye Year speaks to a mother's realization that her child's senior year of high school is the end of motherhood as she knows it, because Toni Piccinini knows exactly what that's like. After her third child graduated, she was an expert at…