Today is the last first day of school I’ll have with two kids: a high school senior and a seventh grader.

My high schooler is… surly. This summer has been difficult. He’s chafing at the bit, eager to be more adult than he has any right to be—like we all were at that age. All those times we told him, You know, someday you’ll want us to trust you to do things on your own, and now is the time to build that trust—and were promptly ignored—are coming home to roost. We’re not exactly sad to see him out of the house and back in school for seven hours a day.

Our seventh grader, on the other hand, has had a great summer. He learned to record and edit videos, built Boolean logic circuits in Minecraft, and even revived the remnants of a short-lived crocheting hobby to make a few small things. He’s been moaning about returning to school for weeks, but this morning he was so excited he could barely sit still. He’d never admit it, of course, but it was clear school was a small price to pay for spending so much time with his friends.

I don’t have a great memory for specific events, but I do remember my first day of seventh grade. It was August 24, 1992–the day Hurricane Andrew devastated Homestead, several hundred miles south of us. It was a cloudy, blustery day, but nothing in the air betrayed the ferocity with which the storm came ashore.

I have no memory at all of my first day of 12th grade. I assume I was excited, able to see the light at the end of the public school tunnel. But maybe not–I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life, and it might have felt like another step toward an irreversible decision point. Of course, in retrospect, there are very few irreversible decisions in life. It just doesn’t feel that way when you’re 17.

Which, of course, makes me think I should be more understanding of what my own 17-year-old is going through–just as I wish my parents had been with me. It’s so hard to remember what it was like, but it’s not like life has gotten any less disorienting in the last three decades, so perhaps the Golden Rule applies directly.