In July of 1909 my Great-Grandfather, Josef Gins, at the ripe old age of 15, left his home in Durningen Germany, made a 12 mile trip to Strasbourg where he boarded a train for the 400 mile trip to Hamburg. In Hamburg, he boarded the steam ship Cleveland for a two-week, 3800 mile voyage across the North Atlantic to America, where, at Ellis Island, he was given the stamp of approval to enter “The Home of the Free”.

Josef’s parents, Michel and Marie, who were about 59 and 50 years of age at this time, did not make the trip. They stayed behind in Durningen, they never saw their son again. Both of them died in 1912, Marie in April and Michel in June.

I’ve often wondered what Marie and Michel were thinking about during the days leading up to their only son’s departure? What was Josef thinking? We have a few postcards that have survived the years that I had translated a few years back. One was sent to Josef from a train station attendant in Stausbourg, a stranger sending his regards, and hoping that Josef had arrived safely in America and managed to get over his “loneliness”.

Loneliness, at Strausbourg, 12 miles from home, with over 4,000 more miles yet to be put between home and himself.

110 years later, my wife and I are moving our daughter to New York. She has a few film school classmates from college that are in Brooklyn giving it a go, and Sierra is going to join them and give it a go herself. So it goes.

I realize that this move doesn’t compare to the physical and emotional magnitude of that of my ancestors, but I think the trepidation a parent feels when their child makes a move towards the unknown, far from home, has probably been universal across the ages.

There isn’t an ocean between us, there isn’t a two-week journey, but there is distance and there is time. Time and space that can be traversed much more quickly and easily than 110 years ago, but time and space just the same. This time and this space doesn’t seem to concern our daughter as we grow ever closer to departure from South Dakota. She has always been an adventurous one, and has always managed to seemingly, go with the flow, yet simultaneously, blaze her own path.

As J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “Not all those who wander are lost”. I agree, not all, but some that are wandering are lost, and it seems to the parent of one who does wander, and occasionally get lost, that wandering lost in New York City may be a bit less desirable than wandering lost in the hills and prairies of South Dakota.

These are the worries that arise when parents make the mistake of Googling crime rates. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, sometimes we have little choice but to let our children go forth into the unknown. Go forth and wander, go forth and get a little lost…just a little.

I suspect she will find a bit more of herself and bit more of who she wants to be with this move, and it is within that suspicion I choose to take solace.

1909 was a long time ago, and someday, so too will 2019. If only our ancestors could see what they started.