Leaving Home

I found a box of old photos recently.

Now these were real photos - 4x6 prints from back when cameras used film and photographs were physical things that you held in your hand. I found this one picture of a goofy looking kid standing in front of a yellow rental truck. Although it was not timestamped, I knew the photograph was taken in July of 2000. If the picture had been taken five years later it would have been captured digitally and would have been saved on a hard drive. It would never have become a physical artifact that could be found in a box.

If you look closely at the printed photo, the sky reveals it is just before dawn. What you cannot see is that the kid has loaded all of his worldly possessions into the rental truck behind him. In a minute he will leave his childhood home and spend two days driving a thousand miles to the north. He will get a job in a city where he knows no one. He will make friends. He will build a career. He will eventually move back to Texas, but he will never move back home.

He will eventually marry and have children of his own and they will grow up in a different home in a different city. On occasion the kid will visit his old home - the one he grew up in - but he will always be a guest there.

Even when his own kids are still the kid in this photo will squint and be able to imagine a time when they, too, will pack up their worldly possessions into a truck. Like their father before them, they will leave home to create a life and a family and a home of their own. But before they do that - before they leave their home one last time - he will take their photo. He'll print out a copy of that photo and he'll send it to wherever his kids are going. 

His kids might not think much about the photo at first. They might think it strange to receive a photo of what they were leaving behind. They might put the photo in a box and forget about it for many years.

But one day they'll find the box. They'll look at the photo and remember the day they left home.