Moving Out

For the parents of young adults, there are two types of moving-away-from-home events: the sad-beginning, and the happy-ending. The sad-beginning occurs when the youth leaves home for the first time. Lots of tears and anxiety accompany this departure. After a few weeks the parents realize that they can function without the young adult and the young adult thinks ditto. This event precedes the happy-ending moving-away event, which may not occur for several years. This is when the parents decide that the youth has established their own household and can finally take responsibility for all that stuff they left behind. And that is the event that my wife and I are celebrating this weekend. When I was young I couldn't understand the look on my parents' faces when they visited my house one afternoon with a carload of my former junk from their basement. They were beaming with joy. "Here is your stuff," they declared. Wait a minute, I thought, I don't have room for all this stuff. Can't you just keep it for a while longer? Don't you have plenty of room in that big house of yours?

It took us a while to figure out this special coming-of-age milestone. When our first son left for college seven years ago, we kept his bedroom as is, expecting him to want to return home frequently to visit his parents. He didn't.

We were smarter when son number two moved out. Within weeks his bedroom was remodeled as a music room. He returned home to visit, went downstairs, and returned with a puzzled look on his face. "What happened to my bedroom?" he asked. "You mean the music room?" I answered, deadpan. "Oh" he replied, the understanding spreading slowly across his face.

So now my wife and I are in the midst of a 2400-mile road trip to drag 180 cubic feet of stuff in a rental trailer to son number one who is now married and living in Virginia, and we are reminiscing about our transition into this tradition of transmission - transmitting a child's belongings from "home" to their new location. My son and daughter in-law are eagerly awaiting this special delivery, and what may seem like random stuff to us are their college dreams and special memories. Someday they will repeat this tradition with their kids, both the sad-beginnings and the happy-endings. And the cycle will continue, generation to generation.

Here's to moving out, and to happy endings. We are grateful and give thanks.

Comments? I’d love to hear your story at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

__________________________________________