It’s been five months since this decision, and we are now exactly where we knew we would be: doing this slow, meandering looking that is both dull and suspenseful, both aimless and incredibly pointed. It feels like we are going nowhere and yet the clock keeps ticking, taking us closer to somewhere, even if we can’t really see the direction and the destination yet.
And if you are a parent, and that sounds familiar, it’s because it is. It is, in fact, exactly like taking a long walk with young children. Which is something we do a lot, so I guess that is how I found myself thinking about the similarities the other day, less than a mile from here, as the spring starts to burst out from the branches and blow across our faces in light winds. The early year rain puddles drown the emerging grasses and cradle the glittering sunbeams.
But as for our next phase of life, it’s not really up to us right now, and as for our walks, our destination and our limits aren’t really up to us much these days either. In fact, they are in the hands of small boys, running up ahead of us, because we go only where they can go with their small legs and we turn around when they can’t go with any further.
Our walks right now have strange detours into places like old bathrooms that are clearly not functional, something we would have never known that if we didn’t have small curious eyes with us, and we stop before we wish to because suddenly they all start crying because we forgot the water. Or because they are tired. Or because there is a rock in their shoe. Or because they just don’t want to.
But somehow, in between, we end up at full ponds, overflowing from the rain, and we spend a lot of time there throwing sticks into the still, green water. It feels about as productive as throwing out inquiry after inquiry and often not getting anything back, and yet those motions are good enough for the boys.
We throw things out, we talk to people, we get ‘no’, we get ‘later’, we get, ‘do you belong here’, we get, ‘come back in a few months’, and we look into places and jobs that we never would have considered before we started this.
We get impatient, but the process is still moving somewhere, even if it feels like it is only in a crooked line for no apparent reason. We get bored, when we know we still need strength at the end to carry the boys partly (or all the way) back, when we know we still have to do more interviews, more moves, more making of new lives. Again.
We think the meandering isn’t valuable, but our boys’ eyes light up when they find an old pump that still works just off the trail, and they have never seen one before. They have never struggled to lift up that handle and then seen the clear, cold water pouring out of anything that wasn’t a faucet, and we hear from old friends that we haven’t heard from in years because this time for looking is marked by reaching out to friends, old and new, and asking.
We think it is taking too long, but because of all the stops and starts and rights and lefts we meet an uncle running back at just the right time and see him perfectly silhouetted on the ridge line, with Lincoln trying to keep up behind him.
So we take what is around us and we say it is enough right now, the sunlight hitting the long roads, the occasional tears by the side of the path, the strange vague places that we stand for a few seconds. And the long trips for job fairs, the constant checking of the phones, and the emailing, always the emailing.
And we know we are going somewhere because we keep on walking.
Bailey Suzio says
Keep on keeping on – the destination is coming.