Adventure isn’t about going to exotic places, and taking enviable Instagram photos. Adventure is about having an open heart, being game for going anywhere, doing anything, and experiencing something new. It can be on the other side of the globe, or in our own backyard. It can be as simple as feeling your breath catch, after driving through the flatness of Mississippi, and coming to the top of a rise that drops off into a valley, with the mountains of North Alabama visible in the distance. Sometimes adventure is the comfort and familiarity of walking into our own front door after we have been away.
I have only one daughter, in the middle of two sons. We are the same, and yet so very different. I look at her sometimes, and see myself. At others, I wonder how on earth we are genetically related. Graduation from college is right around the corner, and I realized it has been way too long since I visited her in the wilds of Mississippi. Usually I can bribe her to come home and save me the trip! She has been home many times, and we spent ten days out of the country together, at the beginning of this year, but it was time for me to make the effort to go to her.
Rarely has a quick overnight been so rewarding. We bring these small humans into the world, struggle through the sleepless nights, and keep them alive through those early, delicate years. We do our best to teach them to make the right choices, and we agonize over if we are doing “enough”. A day always comes when we have to stand back and watch what they do on their own. This trip showed me everything I needed to know, and I was blown away.
This incredible woman has built a life, completely independent of us, that we have had inklings of but hadn’t really seen. Well, I finally saw it, and it is beautiful. The college years are fleeting and temporary, yet she took the time, and made the effort, to put down roots. She not only found her people, she gathered them close to her, fed them, encouraged them, and created a home away from home for all of them. Her apartment is where they gather for board game nights, crawfish boils, and just to hang out and be with their chosen family. They will be some of her lifelong friends, and when she sent the call out that her mom was in town, and making risotto, they came. It was gratifying to see that the people she has chosen are ones that I like, whose company I enjoyed as well. They are all old enough now that it was more like hanging out with friends, instead of being the lone grown up at the kids’ table.
She is the glue that binds them all together. She checks on them, encourages them, reminds them that yes, they can do it, whatever it may be, and points it out when they are making a choice that could come back to bite them. This mom’s heart was happiest though because she feeds them. In southern culture, food is love. Sometimes people just need to stop a minute, have a meal prepared with love, even if it is only macaroni and cheese out of a box, and take a breath. It helps all of us recenter and get ready to battle the world again. It is her table where they often do that, even if that meal is often eaten on a sofa, or sitting on the floor, because the actual table is only big enough for two. She finds a seat, and a plate, for anyone who needs one. I watched her pouring ingredients into a five gallon bucket, because her first batch of our family’s bourbon punch hadn’t come out quite right, and she wanted to do it again with me there. I don’t know that I’ve ever been happier to just stand back and watch her. I knew that she will be sharing that batch of punch with her friends, for the next month or more to come.
She graduates in May, and will not be coming home. It is what I had always hoped for her, that she would venture out into the world, find her own place, and build her own life. It means that she is confident, and secure enough to forge her own way. I can’t say this mom’s heart doesn’t twinge a little when I think about the fact that she will never live at home again, not even for the summer. I left the wilds of Mississippi feeling overwhelmingly proud of the woman she has become, and knowing she is fine. She is her own person and will remember her roots, at least when she realizes she forgot an ingredient in a cherished family recipe and needs to reach out to her mom to figure out where she got off track. In the car, with the top down, and the sun on my face, driving east into the early morning sunrise, I felt a balloon string pull out of my hand. Rather than being sad at the loss of the balloon, I am excited to see where it goes. I had care of her heart for many years, now it is her turn to guard it, and to nurture it. She knows where home is, even while she sets off to create a home of her own.
Vagabond.Belle 