I don’t know if you’re past this milestone or if you remember much about it if you are, but graduating high school is a stressful time when you’re going through it. And no, I don’t mean worrying about whether you can get a date to prom, or your cap and gown will show up in time and in the right size, or even if you’re going to squeak through 3rd-period Physics with at least a D-. Because yes, all those things are stressful.

No, I mean the stress that comes from the gradual realization that soon you’ll be moving on to another phase in your life where, whether you’re ready or not, you’re an adult—if only legally.

So, as graduation approached, I, like, I suspect, most of my friends, was ambivalent. Of course, I was really excited about the next stage of life—college, freedom, independence. But I also had a great deal of anxiety—knowing I was on the verge of facing life without training wheels.

There’s a song that, at least as a parent, has recently made me ugly cry on more than one occasion. It’s by some young brothers who go by the band name AJR. The song is titled “Don’t Throw Out My Legos.”

Here’s how it begins:

My new address is hard to remember

So I wrote it on the back of my hand

'Cause I leave the nest this coming December

To make it as a grown man

I’m 'bout to lose my only defenders

I'm packing up whatever I can

Been waiting for today, but

All I can think to say is

Oh no, don’t throw out my Legos

What if I can't let go?

What if I come back home, back home?

Can we keep my Legos at home?

'Cause I wanna move out

I don't wanna move on

I could have written that song (well, or at least a clumsier version of it) the summer after I graduated high school. I, too, wanted to move out, but I didn’t have any enthusiasm for moving on from a life and friends and family that I’d always counted on to hold me up lest I get sucked under the tidal wave that seemed on the verge of swallowing me up.