When a person leaves your home, there is a tilt in your universe. The balance scale, so carefully dialed in through the years, is suddenly weighted differently. Your side is too heavy. His side is too light. His room is too clean. His new life is too mysterious.
I forgot to take pictures the day we moved him into his dorm room. I suppose we were too steeped in the moment, reconstructing the futon, laying out the rug, debating the best place for the refrigerator. I feel badly for not documenting such a momentous occasion: my boy, entering his new room carrying a duffle of clothes and linens in one hand and his banjo in the other, and me following behind carrying a laundry basket and wondering if I did enough to prepare him.
I wrote him this morning, telling him it's perfectly normal to have an identity crisis at the beginning of college, where you are a small fish (maybe an amoeba) in a big pond. I don't know that he's actually having one, but I suspect he is. It's so much better to be known than to start over with a great herd of unknowns.
Jesus must have felt that way, walking from town to town, humming some futuristic Whitesnake song, "Here I go again on my own..." Starting over with new people. Expecting rejection mingled with acceptance. Leaning on a bit of miracle-making.
My understanding of life has always depended more on metaphor than numbered lists of "how tos." Currently, life is a balance scale, off-kilter and needing the weights rearranged. A photo of my boy in his new life would help. Perhaps a miracle would help. What exactly is the weight of a miracle?
