Same as it ever was.

Tonight I was reminded of the last days at my childhood home.  I’d had a rough patch, the kind of thing where you had to grow up way too quickly in the months prior, and life took a turn that you’d never intended or thought that it would.

I had all my stuff piled up in the den, some clothes, a radio, odds and ends, the things you accumulate by the time that you’re 17, or 18, or 20, that you consider the things in your life that are “yours”, and the things you want to carry with you.

I don’t remember what I did that night, its been lost to the years that have accumulated after (not too many years, sometimes, sometimes more years than I’m willing to admit), but I remember the feeling of finality.  I was the oldest, and the first one to leave, and I knew that I was breaking up “the team”.  That when I left, things in my little house that had been the same for a lifetime weren’t going to be the same.

I remember the sadness, the bittersweet feeling that because of this freedom I was taking, that I was almost wrecking the lives of my Mom and Dad in a way that is inevitable, but profound. Its a sadness that tinged the excitement felt by taking a new life and making it mine.

I had a mohawk.  It was a crappy little mohawk, my head wasn’t shaved, and the thing only stood up about 4 inches, and thats what finally hit me THIS night, 15 years after my night, when I watched a kid who’s practically my little brother, with the same crappy mohawk, say goodbye to me, and to friends, and to family, on his last night before his life.

He’s joining the Navy tomorrow.  I met him a few years ago, when he was in high school, the son of a family friend.  He calls me his big brother, and I’ve loved him like a little brother in that time.  I’ve watched him be a dumbass and a hero.  I’ve watched him, like me years ago, lose sight of what he wanted at times, and clasp on what he wanted at other times.

He has always reminded me so much of myself, that first child, with the combination of brains and reckless independence that ends up keeping him from meeting “potential”, as they like to say, and the damnedest thing is that I never realized how much we’re alike until I watched him with that mohawk, and his brown eyes watching a chapter close.  Just like mine did, years and years ago.

Life is amazing.  I’m so glad that I’ve been part of his life, and that I’ve been lucky enough to be as close to him for the time that he’s been here, and I can’t wait to find out where life is taking him next.  I’m going to miss the boy, miss him more than I can say, but I’m SO EXCITED for him, because he’s going to find himself, just like I did.

It wasn’t easy.  The boy I know intimately, who wore that dumb mohawk 15 years ago, had a rough time.  But the rewards, oh man, the rewards of that life he took for himself are more than could ever be spelled out in letters.

I pray that Tripper finds rewards, even if he has to go through the hard to get them.  I can’t wait to find out.

Love you, Tripp.