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And for the first time in ages, I forgot all about the laundry.
Nino - 22 years
“This feels like an oddly full-circle moment,” Sunshine said as we all stood in the front yard of mine and Savannah’s house, watching two of our kids stash some backpacks under the front seats of the van they’d been working to turn into a camper for the past several months.
“It feels wrong to hate and love this at the same time,” Savannah admitted, leaning back into me.
“No, it doesn’t,” I assured her.
Because I was having the same conflicted feelings.
On the one hand, we of course wanted our kids to have rich, full lives. To travel, to explore, to experience things that they would never be able to if they never left Navesink Bank.
On the other, though, they would be gone. Out of our sight. Out of my protection range.
It was fucking terrifying, even if I understood that letting go was a vital step in the parenting journey.
“They’re adults,” I said, speaking mostly to myself.
“I know,” Savannah agreed, but I could practically see how her mind was flashing with images of gummy baby smiles and kissing bruised knees and, yeah, even the screaming and crying, and all those things that made up childhoods.
“They can, officially, do whatever they want.”
“Let’s hope that they don’t want to do acid and have adult experimentation times,” Sunshine said, making Savannah let out a groan.
“Mother!”
“Oh, hush. They didn’t hear me. Besides, we all had the drug talk.”
Yeah, that had been an interesting one.
Especially when most of us believed that some drugs weren’t inherently wrong or dangerous. I mean who amongst us hadn’t enjoyed weed at some point or another? And Sunshine had stories about acid and mushrooms that made me think that, under the right circumstances, they weren’t the life ruiners that a lot of other drugs were.
At the end of the talk, it seemed like what we instilled was “Drugs are bad. Plants are… a gray area. And don’t you dare ever drink and drive.”
It… covered the basics.
“They’re good kids,” Savannah insisted.
“They are,” I agreed.
“We did a good job preparing them for the world.”
“We did,” I confirmed.
“And neither of them are morally opposed to sticking a screwdriver into a throat if necessary,” Sunshine added, getting another groan out of Savannah.
But she wasn’t exactly wrong about that, either.
With my job, with the Family, we all raised our kids to be adept at self-defense, to know how to use all sorts of weapons, and even to know how to turn mundane thingsintoweapons in a pinch.
Which was why each of those kids had a small arsenal of personal protection items with them.
I’d feel better if they had a gun, but none of us wanted to risk jail time for them because they carried guns across state lines.
“They’re just having an adventure,” Savannah said, surprisingly anxious about this when she’d been so enthusiastic when the kids had first come to her with their plan. She’d given them routes, places she believed they had to see, places she’d loved when living in a van on the road with her mom.
But, I guess, things can be exciting during the planning stage. And downright terrifying when it came to the execution phase.
