She’s standing there with a knife in her hands, shaking it at me she’s so angry. Tense moment #567 in the span of so many throughout this impossible situation, though most of them not involving weapons. “It doesn’t work that way! This is not the way the world WORKS! MOM! She is not only exasperated by the meddling mom (chronically meddling), she is visibly angry, the words furred and harsh as she tries to hold back the emotion of these recent days and hours before her departure. Oh really? I am a little angry now too, for I have–it suddenly occurs to me there, at the ticket counter of the Richmond International Airport–been holding my tongue and staying my ways and checking my input at the door of my own home for weeks, months maybe. I am about to lose one of the nicest aspects of our life and home these last eighteen months, and I am angry, too. The sting of losing her. Desperate for things to go right for this child, and determined to insert myself when they don’t. The “way” the world “works.” Oh really.

And then, I prove her wrong.

Ellie is about to board a flight for Eugene, Oregon. Rain capital of the USA, it turns out, as she’s been there a month already, today. Not to mention that the “weather” getting this job and getting her out there during this last year and a half in our home–well, that hasn’t exactly been sunny. That’s what fueled the anger at the airport. She applied–man, how she applied, holed up in her little bedroom like it was the pandemic all over again, scanning websites, applying online, smiling through Zoom interviews even, and then nothing. Each time, nothing.

She is trying to work conservation/environmental positions in the space between now (January 2023) and graduate school then (Fall 2024). What she is really trying to do, in the big picture, is remake herself. Because you can’t graduate after nine of the most industrious semesters out there with 163 credits to your well-earned degree in Psych and Criminology (with a minor in Philosophy, thank you very much), and become an archaeologist. You can’t. But if you manage to throw down study abroad to Italy in the spring of your senior year, if you just slip through the tiniest crack of the world opening after a three-semester Pandemic shut down, and if you happen to fall in love with a country and its dirt, well then, the more you dig, the more you may find pieces of you that have been there all along.

It took that long, a year and a half. Each month that ticked by, the “now” shrank and the doubt grew till it was like we had two graduates to house and feed around here. Then, Christmas. Literally, like the one on the calendar and the one where gifts are given. Her biggest gift came five days before Christmas in the form of an email: Yes, you can go to graduate school in Padua Italy and then, from another corner of the world: Yes, in the meantime for sure you can come to the remote northwest corner of the USA to AmeriCorps. Among other projects, repairs, challenges and set-backs, they are clearing trails of invasive species, battling erosive channels on trails, cutting rebar for campgrounds, and trekking miles along the coast with ample gear in hand. If Sophie once had a job at our local Botanic Garden that should have been called “weeding in the hot sun,” this one should be called “wielding power tools in the pouring rain.” But we don’t know any of that yet. For the moment, this singular moment of “yes” with Christmas days away, she is so happy, relieved to have acceptance from somebody. Anybody. Finally.

And so the focus and energy turns from repackaging and selling herself to proving herself for the mountain she has chosen to climb. She will be living in a solo tent in the Oregon woods working the trails with a small team from the Northwest Youth Corps. They send a packing list, and the transition begins: from lovely, agreeable and oh-so-helpful bedroom-dwelling young adult into a chainsaw-wielding, truck-driving, trail blazing, tent-sleeping member of the five-person “Orange Crew,” which by the end of the internship had earned a giant seal of approval from Headquarters for being the best, most efficient, dependable and amiable crew–the favorite crew. How’s that for an endorsement?

Throughout the winter months at the start of the year last year, we were all about the gear. I think it’s called a shakedown. That point in your journey where you have been researching and amassing gear for the great adventure and it is time to test it all out. A breaking in of boots on a grander scale: Does my pack hold my gear? Can I actually carry it? How does my brand new tent set up? Can I sleep on that pricey little piece of rubber they call a sleep mat? Will it hold up when soaked? Can it? Will it? These questions focused on all the equipment and trappings are, of course, life’s love-language for the deeper inquiry: Can I? Will I? And you quickly discover while surveying your headlamps, trash bags, spare boot laces and mess kit, that this is not a test of the stuff, dear one. It is a test of you.

So, for the 187th time in this house, our guests spurn the amenities at the Burk Motel and head for the woods. Our longest satellite stay was 50 nights: Will in the pandemic set up luxury living under a nylon roof (see Three Chairs April 2020), but this one is a trial run for the 10 weeks travellin’ girl will have in Oregon. It’s a familiar sight for my sore old eyes–there at the edge where our “lawn” (You can call it that but that don’t make it grass. Or green) meets the woods–a cheery little Kelty “Late Start II” with rain fly. They call a tent “late start”??! I am surprised my early bird goes for it, but the name clearly means something to the avid backpacker out of time at the end of a long day and in need of quick shelter. Only the brightest little one-person tent that one can find. Now this “one” is 23 years old, not six. Still, it’s unsettling to me when comfy inside beds go begging in favor of a foreign little outpost in the woods. It does not match the trees in their seasonal garb, but it is like a little beacon of becoming.

Ever the realist, Ellie sets up hers in the dark. And the rain. A twofer. Those old familiar words in my house, thinki’mgonnasleepoutside, make their refrain and instantly my gut sensor goes off, scanning for danger: wind, hail, wildebeests, axe murders. You know the drill. All the dangers of a one-acre suburban wooded lot. The notion “I don’t really want you sleeping out under all those trees” just doesn’t surface. It can’t. (See Landing the Helicopter). I’ve learned this the long way around, mostly from life with wilderness boy: the word “trail” and the word “trial” share the same letters. It just depends where you put the “I.” So often, it is “I” who just needs to get out of the way. This new recruit is going west and the harder she’s had it here the better it will go out there. Ahh, the inverse and counterintuitive lessons of life, delivered long after any formal education through the lives of your children. I’ll give you a “late start.” Still, there’s a protocol for these sleep outs: downstairs patio light on through the night, back door unlocked. Like my home. Always open and there for you. Like my heart.

We’re parting now; the 48-hour packing marathon has ended though the advice moratorium appears still to be in effect. Are you seeing it? It is a shake-down for me as well, of the parenting kind: How well can I do this? How well will I hold up in a storm? I so want to pass. What you gotta understand, says the therapist, is that help is intrusive. What?!! Intrusive? What on the earth?! Do you know the times in my life I’ve wanted, desperately wanted and needed help? Sat down on my own front step in the broad light of day in full adulthood and bawled out my eyes for….well, for the ones in front of me.

Not so, my launch-lings. Apparently my young adults have not, shall we say, felt life’s harshest blows and I pray they never do. But late-start, new-to-a-clue Jenny can do this. Will do it. Drive this amazingly brave and clearly overwrought recruit to the Northwest Youth Corps to the airport to begin her 10-week post. Check. Say little. Praise and encourage much. Check. Speak not of return date or summer plans or anything far reaching. Check. Stuff your own heartbreak and sadness down as far as you can make it go and will yourself to say only the nicest things. Check plus. And under no circumstances step in, meddle, or intervene. Oops.

She’s one of the most intentional travelers I know. Think of the paperwork, the documents, the forms and preparation poured into this gig. Think of the hours online researching boots, packs, tents, gloves, gear. Everything. She’s done it. And done it all herself. Meticulously organized pack strapped to her back–Bill’s Marine Corps seabag, resurfacing to journey the world once again– and an excellently curated daypack on her front. Everything vetted, tested and expertly packed, and here she is, travel-ready. She has to check the former, a big bulky thing at the gate. And so she does, pleasant professional courtesies exchanged with the gate agent, signing off with her duffel and shortly thereafter, her mother. People, this was nothing like the goodbye I had to come up with last fall to put her on a one-way ticket to Italy. No return.

The large duffel is dispatched, the gate pass is obtained, the traveler is starting to detach. Whole situation got that “day of” vibe to it–excitement, relief, doneness. Still, wouldn’t be right to ignore the mental checklist. Making those pre-travel checks that one does, simultaneously rifling through brain and bag: ticket…check…ID check…. she is zipping and unzipping the pockets of her carry-on backpack. Unzipping, checking, zipping back up, until her foray into a front pocket produces with equal surprise an item and a curse: it is a pocket knife. A very brand new, well-researched, eminently useful and high-quality pocket knife. In her carry-on. What came out of her mouth was hardly more offensive than what came out of her bag, and what could not go back in. Could not go through security. Could not get on the plane with her. She is devastated. It must be left behind.

When my wheels turn, I think that my children cannot see them because they are often so distressed by where they take us. But Ellie sees them, in the pause between holding her knife in the palm of her hand, staring down at it horrified and then looking up at me. She is adamant. No! No, mom. But I have already turned around and headed back to the ticket counter, planning to wait right behind the nice couple who were getting helped after we stepped away. “No, mom! My bag is already gone, see? It’s gone. Mom, no. There’s no way.”

Do you know what those words do to me? There’s no way. What do you mean there’s no way?? They galvanize every last shred of make-good I got in me. Last I checked this planet is still inhabited by people, and my definition of people is the same one I apply to myself: there to help. There to help! Why else? So I do. I wait patiently until Mr. and Mrs. Flyaway are ticketed and done, and I step up to the agent who just helped us and explain how this one critical item got left out of her checked bag and how it most definitely can’t go through security with her and how she most desperately needs the item out on the trail in Oregon. TMI Jenny is often confused with won’t give up Jenny. Ellie is too despondent to cut me off, but she doesn’t need to. I am hyper nice, non-pushy, no Karen here.

I want to help my daughter, but more than that I want her to see that asking for help is not verboten. It’s not the anathema. Life is. Life is awful. People, by and large, are not. Agent couldn’t have been–what? You guessed it. Nicer. He had us wait while he helped another customer and then he instructed us to meet him in the lower level at the furthest end of baggage claim where, sure enough, he reappeared some moments later from behind a locked door carrying Ellie’s big duffel. It had made its short journey from ticket gate to security scanner and had been plucked from the conveyor belt just in time to insert a little stowaway knife and resume its journey to the belly of the plane. How about that. Didja know they could do that? Neither did I. But it never hurt to (fill in the blanks) _ _ _.

Maybe there’s a softening as we turn away from the transaction and head once again for security. Maybe there is a wash of relief passing over us both for all that is behind, and a spontaneous embrace for what lies ahead. For Gods’ sake child, the world’s on fire and you think you got the luxury to go it alone? Do you think I want you in a foreign country, experiencing any sort of distress or obstacle, telling yourself “there’s no way”? Forget all the shiny new gear and look to the real resources. There are people, my one. And where there are people there is help. Life may be hard, I tell her in my mind, but people come through for you. If you let them.

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