The Dashboard Wailing Wall

To raise a child who is comfortable enough to leave you means you’ve done your job. They are not ours to keep, but to teach how to soar on their own.

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A couple of weeks ago, I dropped off my daughter at the airport as she made her way back to Alaska with the National Park Service. This time, she will be in the middle of bear country at Katmai National Park and Preserve. Days before, I flew to Ohio to help her empty her house and move what could fit in her Hyundai back to my basement at the cabin. Our road trip back to Colorado was filled with sounds of Taylor Swift and hours-long discussions about jobs, family, and future. It was a precious time.

My kiddos and I have been through a lot together – especially in the past ten years when I became a single mother. I taught them all to drive, then watched them each back out of the driveway for the first time without me. I followed each of them to college, helped settle them into their dorms or apartments, handed them some cash, and cried as I turned to leave them in a place where they initially knew no one.

I am so fortunate to be the parent who gets a late-night phone call from my 21-year-old who is so excited to tell me all about how his first date went with a special girl; and the one who helps my oldest son organize and take pictures of his marriage proposal around our lake on Mother’s Day; and the one who is asked to assist with major and minor life decisions like accepting a new job, continuing graduate school, or purchasing a futon at Goodwill. I am the one who tearfully hugged each child as they’ve taken giant leaps towards adventures that have sent them all over the world.

I am also the parent who sits beside a hospital bed after a child has emergency surgery; and the one who gets the phone call that a child’s car was just totaled, but that he’s okay; and the one who helps a child hundreds of miles away via FaceTime choose the right flu medications at the pharmacy when all he wants is for Mama to bring him Sprite and chicken soup while he recovers under a blanket. I’m the parent who has helped with school assignments, lectured and pushed them all to do their best, and the one who knows when they really screw up.

In just the last month, I moved my daughter 1500 miles back home to watch her board an airplane to fly another 3000 miles to her next adventure. The following weekend, I volunteered my truck and my cheap labor to help my middle son move across Denver to a new apartment. Load after load, we packed and unpacked. It was my pleasure to help make his bed and put together his kitchen. A few days later, I drove to Oklahoma to deliver my oldest child’s childhood keepsakes and scrapbooks to his newly purchased home. There, we organized his office, deep cleaned bathrooms, and planted a lovely flower garden for his wife. My little camper and I then ventured to Kansas, where I stayed several days helping my closest friends donate, sell, and pack up fifty years of memories in a small U-Haul to move to South Carolina. My youngest son and I helped where we could while realizing how much we will miss our friends.

Although we are all living our best lives, I have found that my vehicle dashboard has become my own wailing wall each time I drive away from those I love most.

I returned home last week and received a phone call from a boarding school in Arizona, where I have accepted an exciting position as an English teacher with the U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Indian Education. The assignment was initially supposed to begin in late July but is now beginning Wednesday. I packed what could fit in the bed of my truck and have begun my newest grand adventure. As I write, I’m sitting in a state park somewhere between my mountain cabin and my new home in Arizona.

I will arrive tomorrow afternoon on a Navajo Reservation where I’ve never visited. I don’t know anyone, nor have I chosen my own house in which to live. I am meeting a coworker at the high school to get my house keys, so I hope my GPS knows the way. The nearest town with a Walmart or a movie theatre or a car wash is in a neighboring state two hours away. There is a small grocery store about 20 miles away.

While traveling this past month, an acquaintance blatantly commented in reference to my fierce independence and my decision to move, “You’re dumb. I mean, you are really stupid.” Well, my children are all successfully navigating their own paths towards great adventures, and my cabin isn’t going anywhere. I’ll eventually be back on my mountain permanently. For now, I will return to Colorado for holidays and summer vacations. Until then, I will continue Chasing Verbs while living large in small spaces! Not dumb.