Gaining a grandbaby would be wonderful, but it would also end a certain kind of relationship with my adult child.

If yours has reached that promised land of independence, financially and otherwise, you know what I mean. After what is often a stressful process, your kid has become a grown-up who has work, a place to live, a circle of friends, perhaps a partner. She has developed an identity; she’s pretty much who she is going to be.

If you’re fortunate enough to be nearby and on good terms, you have arrived at that point where your child is — not a friend, precisely, because she’s always your child. But you can behave the way friends do.

In our case, my late-life divorce meant that we were single women together, though at very different bends in the life course. We could be silly about that, or serious.

We could meet for dinner every couple of weeks, trade gossip and celebrate work triumphs and dissect relationships. Occasionally, for her birthday perhaps, I could buy her a few pairs of discounted shoes or a raincoat at Loehmann’s (late and lamented; pause here to sob). But gifts were pretty much the only things I bought for her. Sometimes, after a meal, she casually picked up the tab.

If this prospect lies before you, take my word for it — it almost makes up for the teen angst, the fits and starts of early adulthood, the questions about how this young person will achieve self-sufficiency. She did, and I had cherished that interlude.

Now, she and her husband would face years of the mostly happy chaos of child rearing, part of which is the feeling of never being off the clock. Though Emma might be able to snatch an hour here or there for a quick meal with Mom, her responsibilities as a working parent would always loom. Her life was about to be upended, and that would alter our connection, too.