The sun was high in the sky on the third day when my youngest daughter had to leave our family vacation at the Jersey shore. I’m not sure she’s mad the best friends she could and it’s become evident during this trip. She asked her friend to watch her two pit mixes for one week while we went away and he couldn’t even do that. He called this morning and told her he was going to stop feeding them while she was away because they were too much work. They’re young dogs, of course they’re a lot of work! People just don’t appreciate the lives of others, even if they’re dogs.

All I’ve wanted for the past year was to have my three girls together with us for a whole week. It’s my ideal vacation: waking up early with my husband and walking our dogs along the beach, arriving home just as the girls are waking up and marking a big family breakfast, then spending the day drenched in salt and happiness on the shore. That’s all I’ve wanted. I just want us to be together.

It’s been hard. My oldest is eight years older than my youngest. It’s not so hard when they’re little. The oldest one was always about playing mommy with my two little ones, forever wanting to swaddle them, cradle them, feed them, bathe them, change them, and sing to them. As they got older, I indulged her and her opinions on what they should wear to school, what they should value in other people—I let her mommy them so much that I felt proud of her ability to feel such compassion for people completely outside of herself at such a young age.

I’ve tried for my whole life. I tried to be the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect friend. I always felt like I fell short somewhere, somehow. As a daughter, I never felt like I could measure up to my parents’ expectations as their first generation American daughter—they were immigrants from Colombia and Italy themselves—I always felt such a pressure to live up to their expectations as to what an ideal American child was. As a sister, I always felt like I fell short. My brother told me that I was stupid, so I always believed that I was. I never could have been enough in their eyes. As a friend, I faired a little better—I was truly able to listen and help heal the deepest of wounds my kindred spirits felt inflicted with.

I never wanted that for my girls. I never wanted my daughters to grow up doubting my love for them, or my beliefs in their abilities. I never once wanted them to look back at their lives and wonder if they were enough for me, but I didn’t know how to show them. So, I just let them be themselves. I only stepped in if I noticed any spec of meanness, otherwise I let their freak flags fly free. I let them run around in their underwear, shirtless, with bathrobes tied around their necks like superhero capes. I let them sing to me like Mariah Carey in the living room. I let them dress themselves in all their wacky glory. I let them grow into their own women.

I’m so glad that I did. They have each become so separate and yet so the same from the next. They are each sweet and kind and generous and big-eyed, and that is where their similarities end. One loves books and words, and the next loves all furry creatures, and the next loves art, and I love that—these little people I’ve made with such separate and distinct personalities. I have made women who value themselves over anyone else. I have made women who are intelligent and confident and still need their mommy when things get to hard. I have made three women from my own heart and in order to keep going, I need all of us to keep pulsing at the same pace.

The problem with your kids growing up is that they leave. They either find love and move on or they find themselves and leave. This year, all at once, all of my girls flew free of me, and I’d be remiss if I said I didn’t want them to come back to me every once in a while.

My girls all found themselves this year. My oldest found that once in a lifetime kind of love we all hope for and they live every day in bliss together. My youngest moved out on her own to establish some independence, and my middle daughter is away at school, studying the kinds of things that will make the world a better place.

My husband and I like to think of this time as our time—a time to rediscover ourselves and the love we share, but we miss them. As much as we love our time together, we miss hearing them chattering away on the couches while they watch TV, giggling and dancing around as they mimic their favorite singers, even bickering about mundane things.

We miss them and want to be with them. So we planned our annual vacation as usual. We rented a house large enough for everyone. We gave them enough advance notice that they should all be able to be with us, but my youngest had to leave today to take care of her dogs. I miss her and wish we could still be together because it feels like this is the last time we will get to be like this.

She made it home safe and the rest of us went to the Shack for tacos. We were talking and laughing and the next things I knew, the sky was turning a deep orange.

It was going to be a spectacular sunset. I needed them all to see. I needed us to see it together; our shared memory.

I didn’t care if they were still eating. We loaded into the car and my husband sped over to the ocean side just in time.

We ran out of the car, paper cups filled with mojitos in hand, just as the sun melted into the water, the skies aflame with pinks and oranges.

I felt the tears threatening to overtake me as my girls wrapped their arms around me. we stood in awe of the sunset, wrapped together, connected as one, and even though my youngest was a hundred miles away, I felt her there with me, all four of us intertwined in love.

And I knew we’d always be together. I knew we’d always be the kind of family that stuck. And I felt such pride and love that I thought I’d explode.