I'm at a party at my younger son's school when my older son calls my cell phone.

This is the same swaggering college freshman I'd playfully counseled earlier in the day about admitting when he's wrong, the same absent-minded son who dropped his wallet in the street that morning and knew it only when the cops called me to say they retrieved it.

"Mom? Where are you?" he says.

"I'm at a Valentine's party at Benjie's school. What's up?"

"I need to talk to you," my son says, his voice shaky and wound up.

"What's wrong?"

"Can you go out in the hallway where it's quiet?" he says.

"Okay," I say, moving quickly.

"Are you ready?" he says.

"I'm ready," I say, bracing myself.

With that, he puts me on speaker phone.

And Chris and eight other students from the university men's choir sweetly serenade me with two verses of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart."

"Mom? That was a gift from Dad. That's also from me for all the years you left us candy and homemade poems on Valentine's Day at the breakfast table. I think I'm going to do this every year for you."

This always happens.

Right about the time I'm pondering the weaknesses of my children, right about the time I've convinced myself that maybe I wasn't such a good parent after all, one of them up and calls with a singing Valentine.

On that same Valentine's Day, my youngest child, whose party I had been attending, also proved my excessive fretting unnecessary.

A reserved and gentle 10-year-old, Benjie had moved to a new school, where the usual struggles with making new friends had escalated in my overactive mother's mind to his being a social outcast who will never make his way in the lunch room, much less the world.

Somehow I'd gotten it in my head that he was spending every day in school lonely, isolated, reading in a corner alone, except when he was being bullied and taunted by Fagin-like creatures with dirt under their fingernails.

Then there he was on Valentine's, laughing until his cheeks were red, playing games, popping pink balloons with his foot with all the other normal 10-year-old boys.

That same day, I had a conversation with the soccer coach of my overwhelmed 15-year-old daughter — is it redundant to say "overwhelmed" and "15-year-old daughter" in the same sentence?

Emily had erupted into my arms the night before in a fit of worry and tears about everything on her plate, to include deciding between two high school sports; whether to skip lunch next year so she could take more classes; and the fact that she did not earn a 4.0 this semester.

She was so overwrought — and I with her — that, at 10 o'clock that night, I actually cleaned her Tornado Alley room for her.

Then, during the conversation with the coach, it became clear that Emily didn't always need me to do the fixing.

"I would recruit her for my college team right now if she were old enough."

Not that being recruited for a college soccer team is the end-all of human endeavor. But a good coach recognizes character, confidence and self-motivation as part of being a good athlete.

"Just tell Emily to keep doing what she's doing, and she will be fine."

My children still need their mother's guidance, that much is clear. But what I sometimes fail to remember is that theirs is an ever-expanding universe that doesn't always have everything to do with me.

They are creatures of the world — not just of me — separate human beings with independent, individualized talents, skill, and, yes, shortcomings, flaws and weaknesses that I can't begin to know about or control.

I recall when Emily left home for kindergarten, a bright and loving, but high-energy, high-need child who needed, and got, a lot from me during her preschool years. When I went to my first parent-teacher conference midyear, her kindergarten teacher surprised me with his assessment.

"She is calm, capable, and an amazing self-starter who works well independently."

I almost wanted to ask him if he had the right child.

But of course he did.

I provide the foundation, the base camp from which to start the climb. My children, and the world, take it from there.