Last weekend, my 17-year-old traveled to New York by himself to visit his grandparents and cousins. He traveled by car, bus, train, and foot … Remind you of anything?
On Thursday morning around 9AM, my husband dropped O in Philly at the Megabus stop and immediately left to get to a court hearing. Two+ hours later, O arrived in NYC and walked from the bus stop at 34th and 11th to Penn Station to board a LIRR train to my parents’ town on Long Island. Once there, he walked to their house a block away and texted me that he was there (it was now 1PM).
To some of you, it may sound like we dropped a country kid off in the middle of an urban jungle to fend for himself and figure out how to make his way first to Manhattan and then to Long Island … At least that’s how it sounded to my 80-year-old parents.
But the reality is, the night before, we mapped it all out with him. We helped him order his bus and train tickets online and walked him through all the steps — how to get from one place to the next, what to look out for, what to do if he misses his connection or gets on the wrong train, etc. The day of his travel, he texted every time he reached another point in his journey to let us know he arrived safely.
As confident as I was that he’d be fine, I was equally confident that he’d mess up somewhere along the way … and he did. First, he booked the wrong Megabus in Philly and had to buy a second ticket, and then he just jumped on the first LIRR train going to Jamaica with the intent of switching there for the correct train, rather than look for the correct train in the first place.
But O was also smart enough not to tell us about his mistakes until after he got home (so we didn’t worry or stress), and more importantly, he figured out how to fix his mistakes on his own — which was exactly the point of this solo journey.
Here’s the thing: Living where we do, O is pretty sheltered. He’s never even roamed around Philly by himself (or with friends), let alone Manhattan. Plus, he can be a little flightly, with his head in the clouds — and his phone, like most teens. But he wasn’t going to need to navigate the subway system while in NYC, and it was a quick and easy walk to Penn Station from the Megabus stop, so I knew we needed to let him try it. Even if he messed up.
Was I nervous? Of course. He’s my baby. I worry every time he leaves the house — especially because he’s a young black man (with long locs) living in America. And that’s not an exaggeration; I worry about my husband and older son, too. I have to.
But he is 17, and a year from now, he’ll be going away to college. He needs life experience. He wanted to do it and I needed to let him. I think we often underestimate him. I wanted to give him the chance to prove himself capable, and he did.
My baby’s all grown up.
— LJDT
P.S. His return journey wasn’t quite as independent. After much back and forth, my parents drove him into Manhattan and waited at the bus stop with him until departure time; it was their version of a compromise.
