Well, she’s a New Yorker now, or perhaps an aspiring Brooklynite trying to overcome a distinctively nondescript Midwestern accent. Either way, she’s a long way from home, but the city suits her. Home suits her too, but in a different way, in a way that’s familiar and comfortable.

When a person has aspirations to transcend themselves, to be a bit more than they are, they may find themselves standing on a stoop in front of their Brooklyn apartment with tears in their eyes as they wave and wave until familiarity and comfort are completely out of sight.

A new chapter can be difficult to start, a blank page of uncertainty a daunting canvas to turn ones attention towards, but through courage and determination a story will begin to take shape. A story you can look back on with pride, because you wrote it.

Our daughter is courageous and determined, and of course she’s young, youth can be blindly emboldening. Age, and the knowledge and experience that generally accompanies it, opens our eyes wider sometimes too wide. So wide that all we see are the roots one could trip on, and forgetting to look up and take in the beauty of the trees as they reach towards the sky.

Yes, there are plenty of “roots” to trip you up in the city, and as a parent you see them all, but there is a lot of beauty as well, if one allows themselves to notice it.

Thankfully, my wife and I were able to accompany our daughter on her move, and got to spend almost a week getting her settled and exploring the area. Probably more accurately, getting ourselves settled with the idea of leaving her there. Two round-trip tickets and a one-way takes a bit of getting used to.

As the days progressed both my wife and I became more and more comfortable with leaving our eldest child in a city of over 8.5 million people. We visited with most of them and they seemed like good people.

Unexpectedly, I found that spending a few days mingling and moving with and among the masses had a profound and positive effect on my faith in humanity, and bolstered the pride I have for our country.

I witnessed people from all over the world, speaking many different languages, with the freedom to move towards a life they aspire to live. Yes, I also witnessed those that obviously were not living a life anyone would aspire to live. Some, perhaps by no fault of their own, and some, perhaps completely at fault for the circumstances they find themselves in. So it goes.

This country, and the people from far and near that formed it, and continue to form it, is a good place. Not that place we hear about from the far right, or that place we hear about from the far left, but that place in the middle. That place where real people live real lives, day in and day out. A good place.

Sierra is in a good place for her. A support system of good roommates and friends, in a neighborhood and a city teaming with young people much like her. Weird hair…weird clothes…that cover we often judge without taking the time to try and open the book. Maybe that’s the point, maybe they’re not ready for their story to be read by the likes of us.

The city suits her. I suppose Dawn and I will have to get accustomed to the eastern drift our thoughts take from the comfort and familiarity of home between our visits to our daughter in the city. To paraphrase Billy Joel, “we’re in a New York state of mind”.