AlexZiebart.com

I first moved away from home when I was seventeen years old. It wasn’t due to any poor living situation. It wasn’t forced on me. I wasn’t thrown out by my parents or anything of the sort. It was a completely voluntary decision based on ludicrous teenage romance and a desire for some modicum of independence. I left the comfort of my family home in Wisconsin to live in a small town outside of the Twin Cities. It wasn’t a great decision, but I stand by it. It didn’t go perfectly, it ended in failure, and I wasn’t nearly as ready for independence as I thought I was, but I did learn a lot about myself. I found a job. I worked hard. Eventually I ended up back in Wisconsin a better man than I was when I left, but with the full knowledge that I was not ready for life on my own quite yet.

I lived with my family a couple years longer. My grandmother passed away shortly after I left Wisconsin the first time and my grandfather was diagnosed with colon cancer shortly after. He’d had cancer of some other variety before that and pulled through it. He’d had a stroke and recovered some years before that, too. He’d been through a lot, but it was clear the cancer was going to get him this time around, so my parents moved in with him to take care of him until he passed away. I moved into the basement of my grandparents’ house in the meantime. The basement was nice. It was furnished and carpeted. I had a refrigerator and a stove. It made a good apartment. I paid a little rent. It was comforting and I could separate myself from the depressing goings-on upstairs when I was down there.

I had a job. I worked. I lived. I never thought about what my life was or where it was going. I did a good thing for myself, moving out to Minnesota, but I was terrified of just repeating that forever. Go out into the world, realize I’m not ready, end up crawling back home with my tail between my legs. I didn’t want to do that again, so I didn’t do anything particularly noteworthy. I worked fourty, fifty hour weeks. I came home and played video games or watched television.

Then, shortly after I turned 21, my grandfather passed away. We had to sell his home, because we couldn’t afford to buy it ourselves. My parents ended up finding an apartment for themselves and my little sister, but it became clear that there wasn’t room for me. They didn’t intend for things to play out that way, it was just what life dealt them and I hadn’t exactly put much effort into ensuring a place for myself anywhere at all. I probably could have afforded a small apartment for myself at the time, but I’d never actually rented a place on my own before, so I didn’t even know where to begin. I just resigned myself to having nowhere to go.

A pair of good friends of mine offered me their couch temporarily. In Michigan. I took them up on it. I loaded all of my belongings into one big box. One overnight Greyhound later, I was sleeping on their couch. I treated my time in Michigan more like a vacation than I should have. I did have some freelance writing that came with me from Wisconsin that brought in a little money, but I never treated my time there as seriously as I should have. I used my time there as an opportunity to just stop and think about what I was doing for once. I’m not sure if my friends realize how important my time there was to me. When I ended up leaving, I felt terrible — they’d offered me hospitality so I could get on my feet again. To them, it probably looked like I’d just abused their kindness for a few months and then ran back to the same silly situation they’d dragged me out of to begin with.

When I decided to depart Michigan for Wisconsin again, I loaded all of my things right back into that cardboard box. My friend, bless her heart, helped me carry that horrifically heavy thing down the street, onto a city bus, down another block, then into the Greyhound/Amtrak station. Do note that this box had my PC tower, monitor, and peripherals in it in addition to all of my clothes. It was not light.

She sat with me in the station. I had every intention of traveling via Greyhound. I’d been taking Greyhound for years at that point, commuting between Wisconsin and Minnesota. Greyhound was how I’d gotten to Michigan, so naturally I’d take the same method back. Except I didn’t. On a whim, I walked up to the Amtrak counter and bought a train ticket instead. I’d never taken a train.

“Why are you taking the train?” She asked, thinking me insane. “Adventure,” I replied, confirming my insanity.

So I got on the train. The train had far more stops than a bus did, which was surprising to me. You’d think it would be the other way around, but I guess not. The day was mind-numbingly boring, I didn’t have an iPhone or laptop  and I didn’t even have the foresight to buy a book for the trip. It’s all a hazy blur until my train reached Chicago. Union Station. I didn’t realize trains back to Milwaukee had to stop at Union Station. Greyhound didn’t. I had never been through Union Station and the entire experience was perfectly terrifying. It was massive and confusing and nobody seemed to understand the words out of my mouth when I asked, “Where do I find the connecting train to Milwaukee?”

Eventually, I found my terminal. Desperately pleading with bystanders for help amounted to nothing, but I figured out where to go once I finally bothered to look up from the ground and use my eyes. I wasn’t lost. I wouldn’t be stranded in downtown Chicago. I wouldn’t need to call my parents and beg them to drive south an hour to find me. I hadn’t made a terrible mistake. I just needed to stop expecting someone to rescue me. If I was old enough to end up in Union Station of my own accord, I was old enough to find my train.

I did find my terminal. I sat down in a very uncomfortable chair and set my box of things down beside me. My fingers had gone raw and started to peel from carrying the shockingly sturdy cardboard all over Union Station, but I was on my way home, so I didn’t care about that anymore.

My terminal had a little play area in it for children. Just the basics. A bright yellow slide no taller than the chair I sat in. A plastic tree house without the tree. That sort of thing. There were a few kids in there. It was late and there are better ways to travel between Chicago and Milwaukee so the terminal wasn’t the most populated places ever, but it wasn’t abandoned, either. There were kids there and they were playing and doing whatever it is kids that age do. There was one little girl that wouldn’t join in with the rest of them, though. She just sat beside her mom and watched them. No smiles. No laughter.

She was very young, seven or eight years old at the most, but probably younger. She hopped off of her seat and walked across the terminal. I don’t know why she chose me out of everyone there, I don’t make a habit of drawing attention to myself. She produced a deck of cards and held it out to me. “Go fish?” She asked. The words didn’t come easily to her, but she asked them anyway. Her mother watched me very nervously from across the terminal. I was a very large man who probably looked terribly agitated after running around the entirety of Union Station. I’m sure if your daughter with Downs Syndrome ran off to invite a scary looking man to a game of cards, you would be nervous, too.

I’d like to say I had a very kind, intelligent response to the girl’s invitation, but I made some sort of vague eh? sound instead. Her mother was not reassured. The girl asked, as politely as she could manage, “Want to play Go Fish, please?”

There were only ten or fifteen minutes left until my train home would be boarding, but I couldn’t turn her away. So I got out of my chair, turned it into a makeshift table, and we sat on either side of it playing Go Fish. She cheated a little bit. I let her. “Do you have any twos?” “No.” “I meant fours.” “Oh, sure, I have a four. Here you go.”

My boarding call rang out over the Union Station speakers before we could finish our game. I broke her the news as softly as I could, but there is no good way to tell a little girl that it’s time for you to leave when she wishes otherwise. She didn’t fully understand what I meant when I told her I had to leave. The game wasn’t over, how could I stop playing? I couldn’t just stand up and abandon her, though. “My train is here. I need to go home now. Why don’t we clean up these cards?” I explained again. She asked, “Do you have an eight?”

I am not a crying man, but I came close just then. She was sweet and wonderful and just wanted to play. How could I ruin that? Was there a way I could make this girl understand through my words? Probably not, I decided. She would do what she wanted to do and that wasn’t her fault at all. She simply didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand. Games can’t end before they’re over. So I stopped trying to explain to her. “We need to clean up now,” I told her. “You won.”

I laid my cards down. So did she. Then, with very careful, deliberate motions, she started picking up her cards one by one and putting them into her pile. Her cards were  very important to her. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t need to know. I helped her clean up our game, placing each card in her pile very carefully, knowing very well that my train could be pulling away without me at any moment. Clearly this girl and her mother weren’t taking the same train I was, because her mother didn’t seem to be in any particular rush. I could have asked her mom for help, but I didn’t. I helped the girl put away her cards, said goodbye, and walked her to her mother.

I didn’t miss my train, but I came close. I think that even if I had missed my train, I wouldn’t have been upset. I wouldn’t have missed it because I was lost and alone in Chicago. I would have missed it because I made the choice to do so. That makes all the difference in the world.

I ended up back in Milwaukee, yes, but I didn’t do it crawling with my tail between my legs — I did it with my fingers torn and bleeding from that damn box. I found a job again. I kept up with my freelance work, which transformed into an actual career. I have an apartment. My life is mine and while I appreciate having friends and family, I no longer expect them to rescue me all the time — and I don’t need the rescuing anymore.

I don’t entirely understand the significance of that game of Go Fish, but I think about it a lot. That game of Go Fish is the moment when I stopped thinking of myself as a child. It’s when I realized I needed to make choices. Things wouldn’t simply fall in my lap. Life doesn’t live itself. All of the things I’ve done to improve my life in the last few years, I link them back to that game of Go Fish.

Why? Who knows. Maybe there’s some metaphor hidden away in that game that I haven’t found yet, but it’s more likely it was just a moment of simple peace after a very long stretch of depression and uncertainty. The calm makes fonder memories than the storm.