I heard the phone ringing as I slammed shut my car door. By the time I was in the kitchen the answering machine had picked up. I put down my packages and keys and heard the caller begin to leave her message. I picked up the phone to take the call, and heard my daughter's voice, calling from hockey camp a hundred miles away.

I picked her up at church camp early in the morning on Saturday the fourteenth. For the hour and a half it took to get home she chattered as she does every year -- this was the best camp EVER, she felt closer to God and stronger in her faith, she loved her counselor, a Czech student who taught them how to make smazeny syr (fried cheese) and a turkey goulash, and she can't wait to go back.

At home we had time only to swap bags (she'd already packed for hockey camp), grab her sticks, and pick up the friend who needed a ride before starting out for Penn State University, another ninety minutes in the opposite direction.

The corner of the Penn State campus where the various sports camps were being held was swirling with young energy. We saw kids carrying hockey gear and soccer stuff and some with only a single duffel who were probably the swimmers. We checked in with the goalie's father, our team coordinator -- twelve girls from Lynn's school were registered, ready to work out and learn together.

We settled Lynn and Amanda into a dorm room that was a good deal shabbier than I remember dorm rooms being. It was close to 12:30 and their first meeting was scheduled for 1:00, so we didn't have much time for lingering good-byes.

On the phone two days later she was full of chatter about hockey camp as enthusiastic as that about church camp. The team members were bonding, this would be their best season EVER, and she'd been able to work with two of my former students, now enjoying outstanding careers at Penn State and teaching in the summer camps, girls I had been very fond of and whom Lynn now pronounced AWESOME. The pizza was arriving, she said, love you lots, say hi to Daddy, see you on Wednesday, and then she was gone.

I stood there in the silence for a moment. Then I pressed the button on the answering machine to delete her interrupted message. It played back before it erased, and I heard my daughter's voice again, suddenly sounding not like my baby's, but like my own.