I’m not a mom. But I have a mom.

And isn’t it interesting how the bridge between mother and friend becomes shorter as the sea of life deepens?

In many ways, for my mom and I, the shortening of this metaphorical distance has had far more impact on our relationship than the lengthening of any physical one. Perhaps an odd theory, but we’ve proven it.

When I moved away from my home in Spokane to attend college three hours away in Missoula, those three hours made home seem a lifetime away. How could I live so far from home?

Immediately, as all college students do, I learned that the clothes fairy does not bring clean clothes after all, and that you actually cannot microwave tinfoil without at least a mini-fire (something very much frowned upon by my RA, I discovered).

I called my mom five times a day. I was nervous. Everything was new and I needed the familiar. I needed her to hold my hand through the phone. Which she did. Five times a day.

Soon though, college wasn’t so scary. I made friends just like she said I would. I went to classes just like she said I should. And life fell together in the effortless way that I think it only can when you’re 18.

Our phone calls neither stopped nor lessened. But now I wasn’t calling because I was afraid or homesick. Suddenly, I was calling her to tell her about my classes and my friends. Suddenly, we were laughing together as I regaled stories of dormitory-incidentals and co-ed confusion. Talking to my mom felt no different that gossiping in the hall bathroom with the other girls that lived on my floor.

Four years later as I graduated I came to realize that the calls to my mom had actually increased over the years and although I lived three hours away, I didn’t feel so far away. In fact, I felt perhaps as close to home as I had when I lived there.

And suddenly, I found myself with a job across the country in Boston and that short, three-hour drive to Missoula began to look like a skip down the street.

For the second time in my life, I was nervous about leaving home. But it was time to grow up. It was time to try something new and soak up everything that was offered to me.

I just moved to Boston. And I’m still a little nervous. Everything is new. But now, I have found an appreciation for the unfamiliar. Everything is an adventure and
everything is unknown.

I call my mom five times a day. I regale stories of getting lost walking to the market and the difficulties of sitting still at a desk for an eight-hour shift. I call her from my cubical as I eat lunch and we chat as I walk along the cobblestone paths that I am following toward my future.

In the most basic sense, I couldn’t be any further from my home and from my family. I couldn’t be, physically, any further from my mom.

But in the best way, I know that I couldn’t be any closer to her. And that is something that can’t and won’t change, no matter the distance.