I am not clairvoyant, having never foretold anything more momentous than which obnoxious guest star is going to end up dead on “Columbo” reruns. Yet nearly three months ago in this very column, I so precisely predicted the exact scene that unfolded at my home Monday morning that I almost want to play the date as a lotto number.

“I know that by the time August rolls around, I’ll be ready to pack my son off and personally escort him to the school doors,” I wrote in June. The piece was, ironically, about how I needed summer break perhaps even more than my child after the daily grind of laundry, packed lunches, permission slips and tight schedules had worn Mommy down.

And now I need him to go back.

Obviously, even somewhere in my vacation-happy spirit, I knew that the first day of school would come, and that I’d be ready — no, giddy ― to snap our annual photo and march him, his spiffy new haircut and his big bag of supplies out of my house and onto his new adventure. His new journey will be challenging, fun and enriching, but I can admit that my favorite thing about it is that whatever he’s doing, I don’t have to plan it.

Have fun learning, buddy! The details are not my business.

This may sound callous, but when you have spent most every moment of the last two and a half months with another human being who is dependent on you for money and shelter, things can get close. Like “Don’t you have something else to do?” close. That’s just a side effect of living with someone else. Sure, he went to the occasional camp, playdate and sleepover. But do you have to be sitting up on me? Don’t you have someplace to be?

Now he does.

About a month ago, the almost-11-year-old and I set off on an ambitious cross-country vacation that took us to five different cities in a week and a half, putting us in the same hotel room, or guest spaces with little privacy, or next to each other in literal planes, trains and automobiles. It was a wonderful but stressful and expensive trip that saw us pivoting last-minute to San Diego from our planned camping trip in Oregon because our friends we were supposed to go with were recovering from COVID. After a particularly trying fatigue-and-sugar-filled emotional episode, I said, “Brother, I’ll be so glad when you go back to school.”

For a moment, he looked sort of hurt. Then he said, “Mommy … me, too.”

That’s all the confirmation I needed that it was time. I love my kid more than anything, and as a single mother, our lives and schedules are even more intricately linked. We’re all each other has and we generally enjoy each other’s company. I am also aware that as he grows up, our relationship is changing in a necessary way.

At the start of the 2023-24 school year, I wrote about how growing up means an age-appropriate but heartbreaking growing away. His reliance on me is different now: He can make his own eggs and walk himself to school, but there are still high shelves he can’t yet reach and his general unemployment makes it necessary for me to hang around. But I know that not only will he need me less, but he will want me less, and that’s OK. It makes me feel like E.T. touching his lit finger to his chest and saying, “Ouch.”

We are very early into this school year — three days, to be exact — but already it seems beneficial for both of us. Getting him back to school has made it easier for me to show up in my life independently. I can go to The Baltimore Banner newsroom in clothing with zippers and real shoes rather than yoga pants and sneakers, without worrying about what to do with him. And even when I do work from home, there’s no bored tween napping next to me on the couch and saying, “What are we going to do today?” like I’m a camp counselor and not a columnist on deadline.

My son is only going to get more independent of me. And though I was ready to send him back, I anticipate nothing more than hearing the doorknob turn and him saying, “Let me tell you what happened today!” I love that he still wants to fill me in. And even more, I love that he’s building a life he can fill me in on.

Because that means he’s not always up in my house.