Second chances

A few days before Thanksgiving I got a call from Loren while Cassidy, Devon and my mom and I were on a "camping trip". I'm not usually a fan of quote marks but when you're camping and have phone reception something doesn't add up to a wilderness experience. So anyway, when Loren reached us while we were camped out behind a Dinosaur Museum I was somewhat alarmed. It was the wrong time of month to need any financial assistance, requests that had recently become less frequent. In my mind this clearly meant that he had likely been in a limb losing accident and was either calling me with his toes or using a pencil in his teeth to peck out the numbers.

Turns out my crazy was slightly off, my son had all his limbs and was actually asking for a bit of life advice. He had been asked to move home to our mountain valley and intern with a local film company for the winter. Should he, he wondered? What about his lease, his job? While in my head I was jumping up and down and screaming for joy at the thought of having Lo home with us, I played it cool and pointed out that he had a room in an extremely desirable location on the DU campus and that bussing tables was not his lifelong ambition. I told him there would be very few times in his life when he would have no debt, no dependents and the absolute freedom to turn his life in a 180 degree direction within 48 hours. I also reminded him that he had taken the year off from school to look within and figure out where he wanted to go.

So. Go.

Within two days Loren was home, bringing with him the vitality of the young whose dreams ride shotgun and spill over into their every action. I am the happiest of mother hens having all my chicks back in the nest. The high school years can sometimes seem an eternity, but when all is said and done that short time is over and there is the chance your child might fly away for always.

I feel as though this is our chance to finally live as a family of five. It's not always easy. There was the day, a week or so in to Lo's return when I got a call from Ski Patrol that he had fallen and broken his collar bone and my son was in shock. Then there was the adventure of locating his car and paying the boot company an absurd amount of money to get his car mobile again, they weren't sympathetic that he was in the ER when his time expired. But for the most part it has been lovely and not a day goes by when I don't remind myself what lucky ducks we all are.