We said goodbye during a lull in the afternoon rainstorm. Our feet sank into the soft, wet earth by the side of a newly paved road, dirtying my new white sneakers. She clung to me like she did when she was 3; her arms were wrapped around my waist instead of my kneecap.

I could feel her breath, warm and soft, against my neck. My arms embraced her as a slight sob shivered through her tiny frame. “I’m scared,” she whispered in my ear. I tightened my grip on her slender shoulders and whispered back, “I know you are, honey, but so is every other kid here.” She loosened her hold on me. “I know,” she quietly replied, turning to her father.

He hugged her so tightly I heard her say, “Dad, I can’t breathe.” Abruptly, he let go of her, offering a few final tips about the computer. We climbed into the car, empty now except for a few boxes, as it began to rain again. Through the wet windshield I saw her walk down the hill and into the building, my tiny girl-child swallowed up by her new home — a dorm room on a small campus nestled in the green hills of the Berkshires.

This is a scene that will be repeated by ten of thousands of parents over the next few weeks as they drop their children off at colleges and universities throughout the country. But most of those kids will be 18. They will have graduated from high school and, along with their parents, spent the previous 18 months preparing for this day.

My only daughter turned 16 in July, just finished her sophomore year of high school and now is a college freshman. The past six weeks have been a whirlwind of frantic activity. The admission deadline was June 30. A week later we heard she’d been admitted, a week after that, her financial aid package arrived. She had to be on campus Aug. 21 to begin her first year at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Mass.

Simon’s Rock is the nation’s only four-year college of liberal arts and sciences specifically designed for younger scholars, according to its catalog. It was founded in 1964 as women’s college by Elizabeth Blodgett Hall on Great Pine Farm, which her father had purchased in the 1920s. Most of the older buildings on campus were originally part of the Blodgett farm.

Her father and I had never heard of Simon’s Rock when she sent off for information about its programs. She saw an ad for the school in a flier, touting the virtues of many New England colleges and universities, that she received in the mail last fall, like a lot of other high school sophomores. Over February vacation, my daughter and her father went to visit his parents in Boston and check out a few of the city’s many institutions of higher learning as well as Simon’s Rock.

I sent her with my husband because he is the practical one, the unemotional one, the one who, like his daughter, must weigh and consider every single option and all of its possible consequences, minuscule and earth-shattering, before making a decision. She came back determined to enroll at Simon’s Rock. He came back wishing he was 16 again so he could go there. I had been betrayed.

We filled out forms ad infinitum — online and off. She took the SATs, had her transcript sent and asked teachers to write recommendations. The deadline bore down on us. Her father and I each wrote an essay; she wrote two and everything was sent via overnight mail. I gave her a 50-50 chance of getting in and worried how she would take a rejection. As usual, I underestimated her.

When she was little, I said she was the kid who would step into the Atlantic Ocean one toe at a time and then swim for France. Much to my shame, I forget that about her. A couple of years ago, like her parents before her, she began acting. She played a maid in her first show.

The critic in me thought my daughter would have a fine career as a supporting actress. But with each subsequent production, she got a little better until, when her director launched an emotional piece about adolescents in a mental hospital, she burst on the stage with an intensity that knocked her parents and the rest of the audience off our seats. After that, I promised myself that I would never again underestimate her, but when she applied to Simon’s Rock, I did it again.

My daughter has always considered animals to be better company than human beings, especially brothers. She has two of those creatures in her life, one older and one younger. She also has two dogs, two guinea pigs, and spends an hour or two a week with her favorite animals — horses. Leaving them was much harder than leaving us two-legged mammals.

On her first afternoon at Simon’s Rock, she joined a workshop group for its opening session. All 143 of the new students are required to participate in the weeklong program as they ease themselves into campus life. While our daughter went her way, we, along with other nervous parents, met for a Q&A session with administrators. After it was over, we met her in the dorm room.

I could see that she had been crying, something she is prone to when exhausted and under stress like she was that day. As I attempted to find out what was wrong, her father chose to distract her by showing her how to work a program on her computer. I opened up her workshop notebook.

“I miss my dogs and I hate to write. I do not know how I will live without a fuzzy face in my face waking me up each morning.” That was all I read. I smiled to myself, as she muttered teen-age acknowledgments to her father’s instructions on keeping her finances straight. Then, we went outside to say goodbye.

Yesterday, I mailed a box of odds and ends that she needs in her new life along with pictures of the fuzzy faces she misses the most. I wandered around the house aimlessly sniffing the air alongside the dogs, all three of us sighing with disappointment each time the door opened and she did not walk through it.

“How can you leave your mother in alone in this raging sea of testosterone?” I demanded as we waited to hear if she had been accepted. With a candor I pride myself on, my daughter told me that going to college, no matter when it happens, is not about me, but about her life, her goals, her future. She assures me that I will be fine without her.

“Applying to Simon’s Rock is the biggest risk I have ever seen my daughter take,” began the mother’s essay that went in with her application. Being there is an even greater risk — emotionally, intellectually, financially — for all of us. She thinks she is afraid, she should be in my muddy shoes. I am absolutely terrified.