Posts Mortem
It’s been a year, almost to the day, since I arrived on the east coast. Which is wild. The subjective and contradictory experience of time is especially strange— it doesn’t feel like it’s been a year, but it also feels like it’s been many years. Covid takes some credit for this. The bundle of big changes is also responsible: 3,000-mile move, new coast, new culture, new job, city life, twentyfold increase in time spent with my family, trying to build a friend network/support network from the ground up. Oh, and I almost bought a house. Like, signed contract, money down, literal hours away from the biggest financial commitment of my life… But these aren’t the stories to tell today. They may or may not be told here at all. Time will tell.
For now, a reflection, with the benefit of ample hindsight.
Someone asked me recently if the real value of the trip was the connections it fostered. I’m often a very literal person, and when asked questions sometimes miss other social cues while pursuing the objective of responding directly and literally to the exact words uttered. Not so much of an issue in this particular instance, but it does mean that those who know me well will sometimes cut me off or redirect me when I miss the spirit of their inquiry or misjudge their interest level. Also, it almost never occurs to me to bluff, to deflect, or to say “I don’t know, I hadn’t thought about that.” Instead, you get my thought process in real-time. Over the years I’ve learned to get to the answers (somewhat) faster, read the room and cut myself off, or just B.S. — none of which comes naturally.
So, they had to hear my thought process and you get to hear my meta-thought process.
The short answer is no.
The value of the trip was, well, all of it. I don’t think that I can disentangle any one piece of it and say “that piece was unnecessary.” Because even the lowest point, when the truck was sputtering, my options were dwindling, and some ding dong unapologetically smacked it into a fence post— that still holds value. The hard stuff pushes us to grow. I had an opportunity to deal with my anger in a responsible way, to draw boundaries, to advocate for myself, to be clear and direct. All are historically challenging for me, so any chance to practice them is inherently valuable. Uncomfortable, painful even. But it’s all in the approach. To embrace the pain and discomfort is to grow, learn and advance. To turn away from it is to stay stuck, to stall and atrophy. On balance, I’ve likely gained more from embracing pain than from chasing pleasure. Which is not to say that pleasure and comfort are unimportant or less valuable, they often (though not always) serve as a beneficial and powerfully compelling force or motivator. In fact, they were among the motivating forces that brought me back east.
You’re already familiar with the basic story: pandemic bad, family good. But there was more to it than that. When my sister made the argument, the same argument my family’d been making since year zero, she added one crucial ingredient: cheap housing. Even in the large town of Eugene, Oregon, purchasing a house was completely unattainable at my income level. And my ability to locally increase my earnings to match the housing market was… nebulous. Grad school? Climb some corporate ladder? Ugh. Hard no to the latter. But a move… that could work, and work quickly. Interest rates were near zero, and my sister was right— housing in Philly was cheap. Of course, no one here thought so, but compared to the west coast, hell compared to most major American cities, the prices were weirdly low. What could buy a beautifully renovated two-story, 3 bed, 1.5 bath, row home with a yard in Philadelphia, complete with recessed lighting, exposed brick accent wall, new stainless steel appliances, and central air could buy —and I’m not exaggerating— a dilapidated, one-story, former meth lab on the outskirts of Springfield (the impoverished town next to Eugene). That was the hook: opportunity. Philly had it. Eugene didn’t.
There was also a lady. (Because, of course, there was).
I won’t say too much about her herself, but the dynamic is worth reflecting on. She was here, I was there. We’d maintained a mutual admiration since we’d first met in Oregon 12 years prior. A couple years before relocating our mutual admiration was acknowledged as mutual interest. But from there forward, neither was single at the same time. Until the point at which I was considering the move and then, finally, we were both single.
If I buy a house in Philly, will you come visit me?
YES
It was all I needed to hear. But it proved to be a mirage. The closer I got, confoundingly, the further away she seemed. What went from, seemingly mutual, excitement and anticipation dissipated to distraction and absence on her side. Ironically, her interest in me was inversely proportional to my physical proximity. The closer I got, the less she seemed to care. Disappointing, but again, a chance to practice the things that are hard for me, like being clear and direct, like advocating for myself, like letting someone know (promptly) that the dynamic isn’t working and that I’m going to do something different. So I did. Rather than continue to pursue, like I would have in the past, I just told her simply that I didn’t see things working out between us and I wished her well. And then I felt my feelings about it and let it go. This was somewhere around Ohio.
Jean (remember Jean, the family psychic?) she told me before I even left Oregon that this woman was a carrot. As in, the carrot dangling in front of the horse, compelling it to move forward. The horse doesn’t get the carrot Matthew, she reminded me. I didn’t want to hear it. Jean isn’t always right, and I held out hope she was wrong about this one. Alas, she was not.
But, look what the carrot helped drive: I’m here.
I realize everything I’ve just relayed may make it sound like this woman was The. Most. Important. Factor. in my decision to relocate, but that’s not the case. The possibility of a relationship with a wonderful woman was one factor, a meaningful and powerful one, but only one among several:
Affordable housing
Chance to teach my nephew how to invent and build
Proximity to family of origin, support for and from
Job opportunities
This fellow former Oregonian lady
Cultural amenities (Philly, but also DC, NYC and Baltimore)
Really good grad schools- Penn, Drexel, etc.
Zooming out, looking back at all of it, the whole 12-year journey (of which my road trip east was the last leg) I can see now what it really was: a coming of age.
It’s actually quite archetypical: boy wanders alone into the wilderness, struggles, and returns to his tribe a man. Many cultures, nearly all historically, provide their youth with some version of a rite of passage, a clear delineation between childhood and adulthood. A test, a struggle, a journey, a vision quest, a ceremony, a celebration. In contemporary America? Not so much. The closest approximation, formally, would be the confirmations and mitzvahs of the youth in certain religious groups. The Amish community’s Rumspringa comes to mind. And while I can’t even begin to speak to the roles and responsibilities laid out in every family or group, my guess is that no American thirteen-year-old is being given a plot of land, or married, or taking the helm of the family business (okay, maybe the thirteen-year-olds of the Amish or a far-flung LDS sect). Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding, or over-estimating, the rapidity of assumption of adult responsibilities in earlier ages of human history, but I think the point still holds. We’ve extended childhood, and muddle the boundaries between it and adulthood.
Think about it, what do we call college students?
Kids.
By every biological measure, and most legal measures, 18-year-olds are not children. And yet we call them children. It’s one thing when a parent affectionately or jokingly refers to their child as their kid, or a kid, but when we categorically assign childhood to adults we induce confusion and misdirection, the effects of which can be profound and lasting. And it’s a conundrum that we largely leave to the kids to sort out for themselves. What does neglecting the transition from childhood to adulthood produce? Frat culture.
Hazing. Binge drinking. Feats of stupidity.
Naturally, some elements of the historical, structured, guided, rites of passage persist: competition, danger, struggle, and group bonding. But they’re happening without much wisdom, without any real input from those who’ve come before, who’ve been through the wringer of lived experience and can guide the young and inexperienced toward the most valuable and worthwhile aspects of assuming adult roles and responsibilities. It isn’t at all surprising that, left to their own devices, things get a little… Lord of the Flies.
Maturational children in adult bodies. Left unattended. What a disservice.
Undoubtedly, this arrangement is fine for some in contemporary America, maybe even most. But those of us, myself included, who really needed the guidance and wisdom of a tribe to formally guide them from childhood to adulthood got left in the cultural and emotional wilderness. I remember once, years ago, as a 24-year-old I was living and working in a Quaker eco-village and I casually referred to myself as a kid in conversation. One of the elders corrected me, he insisted I was a man, and we got into an argument about it. (Which is actually pretty funny in hindsight). But I truly didn’t perceive myself as an adult, nor did I conduct myself as one. Because I didn’t know how. So for twelve more years, I made the slow-motion transition to adulthood, patching together the tribe I needed, complete with elders/mentors and an actual, honest-to-God, codified set of instructions on conducting oneself as an adult.
To my culture I’d say this:
You produce what you celebrate. If we want to produce adults, we need to celebrate adulthood.
And so my rite of passage is now complete. What was the value of my trip? I know definitively that though I left a boy, I have returned a man.
Time to get a plot of land and start a family.