Long, Strange Trip

It's been twenty-one years now, so I feel a little more sure about my decision. Back in the early 1990's, however, I was none too sure. That was when I made up my mind that life in Boulder, Colorado was fine, but maybe it was time to take a cue from the Clampetts, or maybe it was the Joads. I was going to load up my belongings and head to the Promised Land: California. At this point, I can't claim that it was a pool of bubbling oil (black gold, Texas tea), that made me think this was a good idea. I can't tell you that I was headed off to look for some honest work, maybe picking peaches. No, I had a job. I had an apartment. I was making my way in the world in a very narrow path, but I was making it. I left the only home I had ever known for a girl.
It occurs to me now that there must have been plenty of people, friends and family, who probably had a pool on how many days, weeks or months I was going to last out in the Golden State. Not in a harsh way, but I had spent thirty years living in the same neighborhood. The only other time I had attempted to leave my comfort zone was when I went away to college. The first time I lasted a week. I never actually attended a class at the College of Santa Fe. The next year I was accepted and moved a subset of my belongings to Colorado Springs to attend the alliterative Colorado College. I was there for nine months, and even then I made the hundred mile trip each weekend to touch base with Boulder and do laundry. After that, I surrendered to the inexorable pull of my home town and stayed put for another eight years.
What was the over/under on my ability, as I turned thirty, to stick with this move to California? I have no idea. I applied for a job at a video store and didn't get it. I eventually found a job working in a book warehouse where I packed boxes full of paperback books for shipment to local bookstores. I missed all those things that I knew and loved about the place where I grew up, but little by little I found my way to a movie theater, a hamburger spot, and a record store. I had a girlfriend. I had an apartment. Life was beginning to settle.
Now I can look back at all the times before and I understand what was missing was me. I had never imagined that I could be in any of those places before. Suddenly I was able to make that leap and I could see myself making this new life. And now I realize that it's time to start preparing my son for that leap. Maybe not now, or the next ten years, but I want him to be ready. I want him to beat the odds, whatever they are.