ELIZABETH CITY, N.C.

IT’S BEEN DONE before; millions of other parents, and I, have done it. But still, knowing that doesn’t make dropping my daughter off with a bunch of strangers for two weeks any less difficult.

It’s summertime and you pull up to the camp, or campus in our case, unload bags, check your child in at the registration desk, walk around for an hour or so and then say goodbye.

It’s a ritual and you hope as she gets smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror that her world just got bigger. You know that she has a great time while she’s away and collects numerous experiences that will serve her well in the future.

When I was 10 and my mother was getting remarried I was being shuffled off to camp in Colorado. Camp Cheley was the place where I would spend two months of my summer while my mother and her new husband settled into our new household in Los Angeles.

My grandparents and my sister dropped me off at Cheley in Estes Park, Colo., and the moment they left me, a sense of foreboding overcame me.

I’d been to camp before, but this was two months of it and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Overall it was camp and that meant we were too busy to be worried about being blue over anything in particular, and I suppose that although I’m sure my mother thought of me, she was too busy getting ready for a new life to be too worried about how I was fairing.

I, on the other hand, as a parent, well I can’t get my 12-year-old off my mind. Oh, I know she’s okay, but after dropping her off at a two-week music program at North Carolina School of the Arts, I started to worry.

Will she make any friends? Will she be lonely? It’s a lot of hard work, this summer music program, so will she be able to handle it? And I can go on and on and on.

So far it seems she’s the youngest in her group by two years. On the one hand that seems to be a good sign since, at her age, she was able to get in — auditions were required — but on the other hand does that help her make friends?

Being a child, I remember, was an awkward experience and sometimes the unknown became one of the most frightening and enlightening opportunities. Well, guess what? Being a parent is an awkward experience and sometimes the unknown is one of the most frightening and enlightening opportunities.

In this case it’s frightening when you send your child off and trust that she’ll be safe and feel secure.

A certain amount of faith is required for this and a willingness to feel unnerved and apprehensive is a good thing. In fact, I’d be worried if I wasn’t somewhat nervous since she is, after all, my oldest child and everything she does for the first time, I do as well, only as a parent.

And I suppose there is another sense of foreboding here that I don’t want to entirely embrace. It’s the age thing.

You know, children get older and as they get older the parent has to let go a little more each time until one day they’re out in the world, without you.

Hopefully, however, while they’re out in the world, whether it be temporarily at camp, or permanently in the adult world, they’re taking a little bit of good with them. You know, some-thing you as a parent might have left behind.

Robert Kelly-Goss writes for The Daily Advance, in Elizabeth City, N.C.