In mid-May Lily graduated from the boarding school in Utah and we flew into Las Vegas and rented a van to move her things home. I asked if she could start the process before we got there. Then I helped her bag her clothing and shoes in garbage bags and we stuffed it all in the back of the van.

The boarding school was on the edge of a small town at the base of a rocky, sage-covered clump of foothills and the beginning of a painfully normal suburban neighborhood. And every time we went there it felt normal at first but then weird because well, where the hell were we? The middle of the desert, Mormon country, residential living for teens.

And the school only had maybe 40 students, with older teens also working as staff carrying school-issued cell phones and seemingly always in contact with someone about where they were going and when they would get there. Clipboards too. But all that was important because the students weren’t exactly trustworthy; most had come from other residential programs or wilderness therapy. None had escaped but surely some had thought about it.

Every time we visited Lily we got a rental house a little ways away from the school so we could pretend we were doing something else, like vacationing. We’d sign Lily out and get a Ziploc with her meds. Then we’d go to the grocery store or a cafe or we’d go out to eat and it probably felt like a treat for her to get away for a little.

In her last few months at the school she’d earned the independent living privilege, which wasn’t really independent but meant she could live in an apartment with a few other girls. And they would learn about budgeting and grocery shopping and cooking, and theoretically how to clean, and it was like her life had gone into double time, having left home more than a year before we expected and now living as she would in college before she’d even graduated high school.

The plan was we’d fly into Vegas, rent a van, and then Lily and I would roadtrip back. From Utah to Washington it only took three days with no more than six hours of driving per day. To Twin Falls, Idaho the first night and Pendleton, Oregon the next. Both towns a bit bizarre on a weekday in mid-May, especially Pendleton. So all of it felt a bit like a dream walking through foreign neighborhoods with the late afternoon sun and spring breeze, this special time alone with Lily.

In fact the one thing about the drive I’ll remember most is how surprised we were by how soon it ended. The feeling on the third day reentering Washington via Yakima, that familiar twisting canyon road as we re-emerged on the east side of the Cascades and realized in a couple hours it would all be over.

Then the odd sensation of pulling into our driveway and what it must have felt like for her to spend time alone in her room again. The time capsule effect, returning to our childhood bedroom. All the associations for her she’d have to confront, based on the circumstances of her leaving. We would start by getting rid of some of those awful posters, perhaps even paint it. The truth is, it all happens in double time.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, parenting

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, mindfulness, Nostalgia, parenting