Editor's note: Bev Beckham looks at Child Caring from the other side.

By Beverly Beckham, Globe Columnist

It didn't begin as a tradition. It was just a one-time thing, a way to recognize an end, a simple coming together, for pizza and wine, of seven women whose children were all friends.

The children had grown up together, gone to school together, and were, that September, suddenly off on their own. Off to college. Off to live their lives.

But for so long, they had been our lives, too.

So we gathered at my house, at my kitchen table, to commiserate. We felt empty. And unhinged. We were worried about our children and ourselves. This was all new to us. And our hearts hurt.

By the end of the night, we were still missing our kids, missing the day-to-day interaction with them, the phone ringing, someone always at the door. But we were more reconciled. We hadn't exactly lost our own "Freshman 10" - the top 10 fears we had about our kids and our own new post-high school lives. What would we do now without our children? Who or what could ever be as important? What would the rest of their lives and ours be like? We didn't know. We had no clue. But we had at least lost the feeling that we were alone in asking.

For 13 years our children had bound us. From kindergarten to grade 12 they had brought us together at Mrs. Philpott's dance recitals, at Canton High School plays, at soccer, at Little League, at chorus, at birthday parties, at haunted mansions, at Spring Fling, at St. John's Carnival, at church and at school, at meetings and events, and at graduations.

And then they left us and we thought - I thought - the bond was severed. But we created our own bonds.

It's become a tradition: Once a year, in the early fall, we gather at my kitchen table and eat Denneno's pizza and drink red wine and munch on the fried sugar cookies Francesca always makes, and rave about Liz's salad dressing. "How do you make it?" we ask every year. And immediately forget. And we talk and talk and talk as if we had all seen each other just the day before.

Thirteen years. That's how long we've been doing this. For as many years as our children bound us.

We started off a little like kindergartners ourselves, the empty nest so new it eclipsed all else. We were as afraid of the future as our children must have been afraid of theirs, climbing aboard the school bus the first time.

But we, like they, are veterans now. College breaks and college graduations, broken hearts, marriages, babies, a stint in the Peace Corps, kids moving and coming home, and kids moving and not coming home. We've witnessed it all.

Sometime we talk about world events when we're together. The world, it seems, is always falling apart. But all subjects eventually lead us back to our kids, where they're living, what they're doing, how they are. We pass around pictures of them and, if they have kids, we pass around their pictures, too. Sometimes we pass around the real thing - a granddaughter who happens to live nearby, who says hi to everyone, who makes everyone smile.

(And then goes home.)

And although the night always begins early and ends late, every year we run out of time.

We're more than seven women these days, because other friends have sent their kids off to college and because some of the college kids have come back and are honorary members of this group that honors them. You'd think it wouldn't work, that women of disparate ages who see one another only once a year would be slow to warm up, that this effort at staying together would have failed, that the center wouldn't have held because the glue was our kids and our kids were gone.

But we were the glue all along. This one-time thing wasn't an end or a beginning but a continuation of something wonderful that our children began.

Readers, have you kept friendships with other parents after your children stopped playing together -- or grew up? Let us know in our comments section. Beverly Beckham, whose columns appear Sundays in the Boston Globe's regional editions, can be reached at bevbeckham@aol.com.