16 year old me – wandering Europe – on adventure!

My parents said “yes.” They gave me money. They drove me to airports, loaded me into vw buses and even dropped me on the side of high desert roads to take off into the wild unknown – often without a return date – no cell phone, internet, any guarantee of future contact. Mom would kiss me and ask “Do you have enough medication?” Dad would give me a hug and say something like: “Don’t forget to call your mom sometime.” Tell me he loved me – maybe slip me another $20- and I’d be off.

My buddy Brad (a frequent traveling companion in my youth) and I were talking the other day about our parents. All of them are gone, with the exception of Mrs. Delk, in her 90’s, in a rest home. In so many ways our folks were different as night and day: Brad’s dad was a lawyer who flew an airplane, mine? a preacher who drove a Rambler. Brad’s folks wandered off and tried things like EST. Mine wandered off until they knew the backstreets of almost every town in Europe (and the world for that matter) and always dreamed of standing one more time on the Ponte Vecchio… anywhere beautiful… away…

But our parents were alike in one way that forever changed us. When we wanted to go, they said “yes.” They encouraged it. They wept through it. They prayed over it. They said “Yes.”

As a society, we say “No” far too often as our children become young adults. We stifle their creativity, self worth, independence, personal determination and spirit of adventure.

We don’t own our children and as they age one of our primary tasks as parents is learning how to let them learn and become on their own – trying and hard as it is to watch, failing and trying again.

Life is a dangerous and risky adventure. Protecting our children from discovering that life that is their’s to live is even more dangerous and risky.

Before my teen years we heard the word “NO” plenty around our house. We also learned the value of doing “the right thing” and to “remember who you are.” On many adventures, in an age before GPS, in foreign lands and unknown places, I discovered that those two important lessons could be my “north star” that would always lead me home.

Palm Sunday, Easter, these days that were filled with so much in the home of my childhood, always make me remember the lessons I learned and make me wish I’d said “Yes!” to my children a little more often. They’re both so brilliant, wonderful and filled with life. I pray I didn’t stifle any of the adventure out of them.

And I remember all the times I headed out the front door – not knowing when I’d be coming back, sometimes not knowing where I was going – but leaving with the security of having parents who somehow, somewhere deep within, longed to nurture my sense of adventure, hugged me with worried, yet loving faces and said “Yes!”

I’m saying “Yes!” to the adventure out ahead of me in the days to come. Hope you will too. There’s so very much of life yet to live.

“Yes!”