A sea of presents scattered by Santa beneath the Christmas tree.

Claiming a bunk in your first college dorm room.

Leaping off the train into the arms of your partner when you're making it work long distance.

When my daughter was 11 or 12 they finally put a name to this tingling that keeps you up the night before, your heart racing, the thoughts running laps through your mind: Nervi-cited. 

It’s the way you feel the night before your wedding day, that constant state of anticipation in those last few weeks of pregnancy when all you can think about is the first time you’ll get to hold your baby, all wrinkly and red-faced and so impossibly small. 

It’s a feeling so big it threatens to spill out of you in tears or laughter or some combination of both. 

I feel it less often now than I once did, each milestone checked off on the journey of life. 

Unable to sleep, lest I miss out on Santa’s arrival made way for Christmas Eves spent hovering outside our child’s bedroom door, listening to hear the rhythmic breathing that signaled it was all clear for “Santa” to arrive. 

That first college dorm room turned into the first apartment, the first house. 

That long distance relationship into that wedding day, that delivery room where together we marveled at this impossibly small human already filling up the largest chambers of our hearts. 

The tingles have slowed, but they haven’t stopped. 

They come back when that first text arrives. “Leaving now.”

It's my college kid, coming home for Thanksgiving. And suddenly I'm mentally calculating drive times, checking the weather forecast between here and there like I have any control over whether it rains or snows or stays clear.

The nervi-citement has flooded back, that old familiar friend I thought I'd outgrown.

This time there's no unwrapping involved, no white dress waiting in a closet, no hospital bag packed by the door. 

There’s just a kid who lives somewhere else now, making the trip back to the place where their bed awaits, freshly laundered sheets firmly in place.

There was a time when I thought excitement required newness — the first time, the biggest thing, the moment worth putting in a scrapbook. Life was measured in milestones, those big bright signposts that said "remember this." Everything in between was just the space you crossed to get to the next memorable moment.

This isn’t new. We’ve done this before, do it before each college break. When did the ordinary become the thing that makes my heart race?

Somewhere between my first college dorm and theirs, the definition of nervi-citement shifted.

Now the tingle comes from things I've experienced dozens, hundreds of times before. The sound of the front door opening, the raucous barking of dogs deliriously happy to see their kid, the thud of a backpack hitting the floor, the complaints about traffic.

In the same way I once waited on Christmas Eve, ears straining for the sound of reindeer on the roof, I now listen for a text notification. "Stopped for gas." "Hour away." "Almost there."

My daughter was right about nervi-citement. It is nerves and excitement tangled together, your body unable to decide whether to be anxious or elated, so it chooses both. That fizzy, restless, can't-quite-settle feeling that used to come before the big moments.

What they couldn't have known at 11 or 12 is that the feeling doesn't stop coming just because you've run out of obvious milestones. It just recalibrates. 

These days it lands on a Tuesday afternoon in November, when a text pops up on my phone and everything ordinary becomes extraordinary for a moment.

"Leaving now."

And just like that, I'm nervi-cited again. Tomorrow my kid comes home.

And tonight, I probably won't sleep much.