This time last year, I put my 15-year-old on a plane to Norway for a year-long adventure as a Rotary International exchange student. As she stepped onto the plane, smiling and waving, it seemed she was stepping out of my life. The only thing that kept me upright was the thought of how cartoonish I would look if I collapsed onto the carpeted floor at Pittsburgh International.

Rachael returned home July 8. I cleaned the house that day, stocked the cupboards with her favorite foods, stripped her bed though no one had slept in it since she had left. I needed something to preoccupy my mind and my hands while the minutes dragged on until her evening flight landed.

Her dad and I and our younger daughter, Lauren, and Rachael's dear friend, Carly, headed out at about 9:30 p.m. with a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies in hand. When she appeared before our eyes, no one but her sister immediately recognized her. Her short-short hair had grown into a bob. She was an inch taller. She was dressed for Norway's cooler climate, in leggings and an oversized, denim shirt.

I'm sure, dear reader, that you're expecting me to tell you that we cried as we embraced and that we've held each other nonstop these past few weeks. Not so.

The truth is, Rachael's return home was a bit anticlimactic. After weeks of tingling anticipation of her arrival, when she actually got here, we slipped into normalcy so quickly I was left to wonder whether it was really true that she had been gone almost a year.

Yes, she had changed a bit. She holds her fork the European way and her musical tastes have gotten broader -- David Bowie is up there now with Franz Liszt, thanks to the influence of her good friend, Sarah, from Australia. But, all in all, Rachael remains Rachael.

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It had been a magnificent year for Rachael; she learned much. Not only did she become fluent in Norwegian and master the efficient public transit system of that scenic and cosmopolitan country (she yearns for similar transit options at home!), she learned about the culture of Norway and about its proud and stoic, reserved and generous people. She also experienced the countries and cultures of the other couple dozen exchange students she came to know and love. And she saw America through different and shifting lenses -- how she is perceived, revered, reviled and respected.

I learned a lot, too, both banal and sublime. For example, don't bother with those international phone cards at 8 cents a minute -- many Europeans don't have landline phones.

Also, a long-time techno-snob, I now know that Skype -- a computer program that allows face-to-face communication via Webcam -- is nothing short of a God-given gift to parents of children/grandchildren who live far away.

And "right" as it feels having Rachael home again, I also realize that having her in the house -- any child in the house -- is exhausting. I didn't know how exhausting it was until she had left and then returned. From the etiquette coaching (sit up straight, stop fidgeting) to the cooking (French toast for breakfast, grilled cheese with tomato for lunch, turkey and the trimmings for dinner -- and that's just one day) to the taxiing around (doctors' appointments, learning to drive, outings with friends), well, it's a lot.

As much as it will hurt to bid farewell when she and her sister head off to the Ivory Tower of Academia, I know now that there will be a measure of coincidental comfort with the pain. Dinners will be simpler, though quieter. There will be more time for me and my husband, and fewer things to do. The responsibility of daily parenting will be finished, but I'll probably feel uncomfortably out of the loop.

In other words, it will be the best of times and the worst of times.

Until then I suppose that life will be about taking things as they come and enjoying what can be enjoyed. And that's what I learned from my daughter's year in Norway -- and her month back home.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.