When I was growing up, my family moved every two to five years.
Thumbing through my old journals, it’s easy to decipher the pains that went along with those frequent transitions: leaving old friends, walking into another strange school and having to reinvent myself time and time again.
But here’s the thing: By the time I got to college, transitions were a snap. I knew, deeply, the feeling of homesickness, which meant I knew how to ride the emotion to its end. I understood what it felt like to be just another person in the crowd and not be “known” by the entire student body.
And I knew myself because the one thing you confront over and over when you move is who you are. Disconnected from friends, your identity as goalie on the soccer team or lead in the school musical, you have to look inward for solid footing.
Last week, we moved from our beloved Minnesota home to the Pacific Northwest. As a parent, I now get to watch my kids experience those same emotions.
We could have paddled our way west on a river of tears, but we did something else instead. We arrived in our new home on a Monday and dropped our teenagers off at our church’s youth pioneer trek on Wednesday.
They knew no one. My boys stood on the curb dressed in wide-brimmed cowboy hats and pure fear, eyeing the clusters of kids filling the church parking lot.
“Everyone sure seems to know each other,” my son Jackson muttered.
As I drove away, I had a glimmer of misgiving. Had I made a terrible mistake?
The feeling passed almost as soon as it came because my parents had done the same thing for me whenever we moved. They dropped me right into day camps, girls camp and youth conferences. “Get involved and jump in the deep end with both feet” was the unspoken mantra.
Which is funny, in a way, because years ago, when Jackson was just a wee 5-year-old and not the hulking 14-year-old who can mow through a box of cold cereal in a single morning, I fretted about putting him in kindergarten. I fretted for weeks and months, as parents do about everything with their first child. I cast dozens of prayers, wondering what to do.
And then one night I had a dream, that I can honestly say is the only dream of any significance that I’ve ever had.
In the dream, we were at the ocean with friends. Jackson could barely swim, could barely keep his head above the water. He would sink underwater, and I would hoist his little face out of the waves, just so he could catch a breath.
His group of friends wanted to go snorkeling far off in the ocean, and Jackson pleaded with me to let him go.
And even though he couldn't even tread water, I let him go. He was gone for hours, which in a dream seems like days upon days, and all I could think was that I had let my son go to drown.
Except he didn’t drown. He came back hours later not only safe but also happy.
When I woke from that dream, I knew I needed to send him to school. He would be just fine. It wouldn’t be easy (it wasn’t), but he would be OK.
I come back to that dream often as a reminder that my kids can do hard things, things that may seem above their abilities. I believe most children, most people for that matter, are far more capable than we sometimes believe.
When the boys returned home from trek, they were coated from head to toe in trail dust and exhilaration. They had a remarkable time, not perfect, never perfect, but truly life-changing. They made friends. They bonded as brothers. They learned they could do hard things, leave their family for four days in a strange place and come back stronger.
And I was reminded, again, that if we drop our kids in the deep end, with a little hoisting and a lot of love, they might just come back swimming.
Tiffany Gee Lewis runs the website Raise the Boys at raisetheboys.com, dedicated to rearing creative, kind, courageous and competent boys. Follow it on Instagram and Twitter at raisetheboys. Email: tiffanyelewis@gmail.com