A and I went on another college visit trip, this time to the windy city of Chicago. A had gone there last summer for a youth leadership conference, and really liked it, so he thought he would check out a few schools. It didn’t hurt that his top two choices have top-notch pre-law programs.

Me being the paranoid traveler that I am, we flew out a day early, just in case. This gave us plenty of time to see all of the sights that he missed last year, starting with the Shedd Aquarium. Since I don’t rely on airlines to be on time, we had to kill a few hours before our entry time, so we headed over to the Field Museum of Natural History first.

It has been a while since we’d been to one of these museums, although we were regulars when the kids were little. We’d toured most of the kid friendly museums in the Philly area while we were making treks to CHOP for A’s follow-up cardiac appointments. We’d done this both to break up the monotony of days of doctor visits, and to also make these visits something to look forward to, the antidote to the hours of testing and needles that A had to be stuck with. There was something poetic about making the same kind of visit at the beginning of another chapter of A’s life.

Walking through the hall of dinosaurs, he jokingly put his man-sized 13 foot into the dinosaur track. I remembered a time when his entire body would have fit into that crater. In the hall of primates, he put his paws up against those of the silverback gorilla. They were almost a perfect match. He will be taking on the role of Kerchak this fall in the drama club’s production of Tarzan, so I thought that was fitting.

As we approached Sue, the world-famous T-rex, A jokingly lined up with her enormous jaws, pretending she was biting his head off. A lump quickly formed in my throat as I remember Steve jokingly tossing G up in the air, pretending that he was going to feed him to a similar dinosaur, years ago. G’s shrieks of laughter and excitement echoed through the entire hall.

After that, we made our way over to the aquarium. We journeyed into the Amazon, and A was entranced with their full-sized arapaima, and gave me a full dissertation on “one of the most dangerous fish in the world.” I always think of G as the sportsman, and the fish enthusiast, but I had forgotten that both boys had been obsessed with Jeremy Wade and the Turtle Man when they were younger. More memories of the three of them sitting on the couch yelling like Turtle Man as he went after fantastic beasts ran through my head.

E had been too little to really understand the shows, but she certainly fed off their obvious excitement and had to be where the action was. Whether I liked it or not, the DVR quickly filled up with every episode of both shows. Hikes to local ponds always turned in to re-enactments, whether they ended up chasing turtles, frogs, or whatever was swimming. It also netted us some pet crawfish for a time. Although I was very glad when that phase was over then, I suddenly found myself missing it, and the instigator-in-chief, very much.

Finally, after a long morning of travel, and a long afternoon of sightseeing, we started toward our hotel, stopping for some legendary deep-dish pizza on the way. When they were little, we would have stopped for pizza because it was one thing we could be sure everyone would eat. Now, A was determined to be adventurous and try the local dishes. Did I mention that we’d snagged a famous Chicago hot dog for breakfast?

After a quick chance to refresh ourselves with a nap and a quick shower, we headed out to dinner with yet another blast from the past, one of my old college friends who lives in Chicago. A dipped his toe into the ramen world, and discovered that he wasn’t a fan of hard-boiled eggs in soup, but otherwise, we had a relaxing and fun evening, reminiscing about our past, and talking about A’s future.

The next two days were a whirlwind of college visits, and some heavy discussions about how we would navigate him being several hundred miles away. I could see that it was starting to dawn on him that he wasn’t going to be a quick drive from home. As we headed back to the airport, I could tell that his enthusiasm had waned just a little bit. Perhaps I had harped a little too hard on the planes, trains, and automobiles it had taken to make the trip.

I had been spending a lot of time dwelling on the past throughout our trip, confronted over and over again with stark reminders. Maybe, they weren’t just nostalgia. Maybe they were reminders of how far we’ve come, and how many chapters we’ve successfully closed, and that it’s time to start letting him start writing this one on his own. By the time our plane home landed, An informed me that he was definitely going to apply to at least one of the schools that we’d visited. All I could say was that I thought that was a great idea.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing columnist who appears weekly in the Times News.