Yesterday, our 22 year-old son drove off to start a new life in Kansas City, MO.
In his car was not much more than his clothes, a guitar, and a crock pot.
After his college graduation this past May, we saw the way he looked at his girlfriend, a beautiful woman who laughs at all his jokes and returns his looks with adoring glances and twinkling eyes.
I know that look! Something told me that, at least for the immediate future, those two recent college graduates would not be able to bear too much distance from each other.
She moved first, her masters program leading her to Kansas City, known as the City of Fountains. He stayed behind to finish his work responsibilities, but I could see that he felt incomplete, missing the part of his heart that was already miles away.
Our family has a long tradition of picking up and moving away, sort of as a rite of passage that leads into full adulthood. My mother did it, taking a train from Illinois to Colorado Springs in the 1950s, working as a server at a diner. When I was about 12, my sweet older sister and her new husband packed up and headed to Maine, which felt like the farthest ends of the earth to me. My oldest son and his wife have spread their wings to live in Los Angeles.
As courageous as those moves were, I often think of our family’s ancestors, getting on a boat from Europe and setting off to America, without the benefit of cell phones, Zoom, Zelle, or GPS. Even today, people leave their homes all the time for many different reasons, sometimes making their own choice or some other circumstances, like safety, making the choice for them. All of these situations require courage, a will to make it work, and a lot of faith. As much as we may like the idea of taking our time and planning every detail, there comes a certain moment when the only path forward is to jump, freefall, and take the plunge. Or, in this case, to pack up your guitar and your crock pot, fill up your gas tank, and go.
My husband and I left Illinois for the mountains of Colorado when we were young parents. We had a 7-month-old baby, no jobs, and weren’t exactly sure where we were going to live. People thought we were crazy. Maybe we were. But within a week we were in a tiny apartment with a view of the Rockies, my husband had a job teaching at a middle school, and I, left carless during the day, was exploring the nearby library, parks, and stores, often packing groceries around our son in his stroller so I could push them up the steep incline back to our apartment.
Around the time our baby boy was learning to walk, it felt as though we were too, taking our first teetering steps as real adults, scraping together a life for ourselves. Despite having very little, relying on a strict budget and second-hand shops, we were happy.
I am excited to see our Kansas City guy go through this process with his love. Together they will get to know their new city, establish some roots, make memories, and learn an important lesson: whatever comes their way, they will figure it out. They are starting with practically nothing, but the point is that they are starting. They may be eating rice and beans for a while, but every challenge and misstep will be a valuable lesson. Nothing will be wasted.
