I got the call Wednesday night: “Mom, the house has been robbed. They took everything.” I was out-of-town myself and tried my best to calm him down long-distance. I figured I’d done a decent job of doing so, walking him through the process of calling the cops, filing a police report, and such.

But then he texted me the next morning: “You home yet?” “Um no,” I said. “I’m still in Portland.” “I don’t think you understand how upset and scared I am,” he wrote back. And so needless to say, I dropped everything, rented a car and drove back to Eugene.

His state of panic and anxiety were high. He was too afraid to stay in his house alone. I told him he could crash at my apartment. He insisted on bringing the 3 dogs with him. “If I’m afraid to stay at the house, why do you think I’d be okay leaving the dogs there?!” he texted me.

And so it was. They all crashed at my apartment Thursday night. And by Friday afternoon, he’d packed all his remaining possessions – all that he wanted at least – thrown them in the back of my car and we were off. Headed out of town. On to the next stage of his life.

Originally, we’d planned for the relocation to occur first week of August. Shit happens. Plans change.

Originally, he’d planned to move to Maine. Then he thought maybe he’d move to San Francisco. The final decision and final destination of our road trip: Casper, Wyoming. My hometown. A place where my son lived for the first two years of his life. A place where my dad still resides. A place I was glad to escape. A place that I’m nervous to have my son land – largely because of my own emotional baggage. A place where I’m glad to have him land – in no small part because Eugene, Oregon has been so utterly, devastatingly awful for him.

A little over 16 years ago, my son, his dad and I moved from Casper to Eugene, joking that it was the fulfillment of our ancestors’ bailing out on the Oregon Trail. “Who the hell heeds the call of ‘go west, young man!’ and stops in Casper, Wyoming?!” And on Friday, my son and I headed back to Wyoming, having buried his father almost 6 years ago now and wondering “how the hell” things in the promised land of Oregon turned so ugly. The burglary at my son’s house was really just the final straw.

There’s nothing like 20 hours in the car with your 19 year son to get a very interesting perspective on “things,” and I know now more things than I probably should or want to. It’s good, of course, to have a close relationship with your kid. It’s frightening to have so much insight into the life of a 19-year-old, particularly at the point where you’re trying to encourage him or her to take more responsibility over their own life, all the while knowing that at the end of the day (now and forever) that the responsibility is still yours.

He’s on to the next stage of his life now. Him and his 3 dogs. Me, I’ll go back to Eugene at the end of this week and pack up the little apartment I’ve rented there and the rest of the mess left behind at the house he was renting. And I too will be done with Oregon. For all that, I am incredibly relieved, even though I have no idea what the future will hold for either of us.