Welcome! In the last two years since launching my Substack platform, Massé Musings: Notes from a Nomadic Son’s Life, I have published 179 weekly entries, including essays, nonfiction narratives and fiction (short stories and novel excerpts). In 2024 my mission remains: to inform, engage and enlighten my readers.
“Notes of Nomadic Sons” (Part Three)
I’m sure my empathy brought minimal comfort.
Almost 30 years after my father uprooted me from Harrison, New York, I was handed his script. For in 1998 I moved my wife and three stepsons across the U.S. from bucolic Eugene, Oregon, to blue-collar Muncie, Indiana. Our odyssey awakened difficult memories. But it also enabled me to apply lessons learned and even heal old wounds as I helped my new family deal with their sacrifices and adjustments.
Mark (10), John (13) and Rob (15) arrived in a community where they had no ties or friends, a strange terrain where people spoke an odd dialect. How well I knew the feeling. Though I’m sure my empathy brought minimal comfort.
On their first day of school, I awoke with a headache and queasy stomach. We drove the boys to their respective elementary, middle and high schools. The silence was deafening in our Voyager van. The toughest one to drop off was “little” Mark. I knew he would feel alone and awkward when the fifth-grade class stared at him. He would probably eat by himself in the cafeteria and maybe forget where his homeroom was located.
“You’ll do great, kiddo,” I said with a frozen smile, patting him on his slender shoulders as he departed.
That night at the dinner table we learned how things went on day #1. Mark liked his teacher and loved the pizza they served at lunch. John had two “really fine” eighth-grade girls flirt with him. Rob said the new high school seemed OK, though he had locker issues and was late for some classes.
A few days later, Mark asked, “When am I gonna make new friends?”
His question lingered for weeks as a beautiful fall descended on central Indiana. Just give it some time I told him, praying our family could make it to Thanksgiving without a major crisis. Sure enough we all survived if not thrived.
Mykie told her sons that someday they would look back and realize all they had gained by moving to Indiana. They scoffed. You won’t appreciate any of this until you’re much older, she insisted. I was grateful for my wife’s support, though I knew the real truth. These boys wouldn’t fully grasp these matters until they were parents and had to relocate their families.
In 1998 I better understood what my parents had dealt with in 1969. Now in 2024, it is my stepson Mark’s turn to handle a challenging cross-country move with his wife and three young daughters. He must deal with confusion and concerns, a myriad of questions and not enough answers.
However, there are many silver linings. He will begin a rewarding new career as an anesthesiologist in a thriving medical practice back in Oregon, where he spent many happy childhood years and where his two older brothers now reside. He and Carrie have bought a beautiful house in Eugene with good schools and many amenities nearby. Their children seem excited about the move (for now at least), and oldest daughter, Merida, is thrilled about having her own bedroom.
At 36, Mark is a terrific husband and father, who has met challenges in his life with hard work, talent and an upbeat spirit. I know he will handle this upcoming relocation well. I hope I’ve helped him along the way with love, support and encouragement, gleaned in part from an age-old script. For as Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s past is prologue.”
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Author’s Note: In 2021, after 23 years in Indiana, Mykie and I joined Mark, Carrie and our granddaughters in North Carolina. In 2025, we will again follow “our tribe” and return to Oregon. That will be lifetime move #30 for me. Hopefully, no more for the foreseeable future.
© 2024 Mark H. Massé
NOTE: To access more of my fiction and nonfiction, please visit my Authors Guild website: www.markmasse.com & https://www.amazon.com/author/mhmasse
I find it marvelous that all roads have led back to Oregon, and better still that you have benefitted and learned from your own experiences. It seems as if the trend (vis-a-vis moving) has steadily improved over the course of three generations. Thanks for the Shakespearean allusion as well. It is absolutely correct (in whatever interpretation it is given)!