One early Wednesday morning last summer 2024, I was sipping coffee at our campground site. Tall Ponderosa pine and Juniper trees swayed a hundred feet high directly over our bench table meaning we had cooler morning degrees. Luckily sunshine was just starting to filter through. I wore a cozy sweater and mumbled thanks for just brewed, strong coffee.

Staying code calm during mystery mode—as in your Mama writer striving to raise her 14-year-old son Darien well—gifts the chance to laugh, cry, chuckle, scream, pause, and celebrate. Remaining curious and open I am on how taking care of another human being happens in the learning paces. One moment I have an intuition that what I say or how I act will bring positive flow. Another situation requires that I rely on decades-long prior experience mentoring others.

What often does not surprise me is when I am clueless or uncertain and these are the joyful, challenging dilemmas. This morning the breakfast hour was already at 8 30 a.m. with clear blue skies and bright sunshine casting healthy weather to proceed into the day. And across the campground site table I floated a progressive question to my son.

“Would you like to go see the Grand Canyon?”

Darien squirmed slightly. Stereotyping teenagers as being incommunicative is not fair, yet I have observed from our teen en la casa that minimal reaction to life will be shown.

“I guess so,” he drawled.

His brief “conversation” belied enthusiasm for the newest travel adventure. Usually his promptness to clear the breakfast table and prepare to start the day is not as swift as he is working now. For a parent, raising a teenager takes decoding what the wayward signals might convey. I am always observing and asking for clarity. Appreciating his efficiency, I etch a mental note that for breakfast table housekeeping, I only need mention the Grand Canyon is a few miles away.

Not over talking the moment was a key strategy so I could listen well. In my parenting these last years the striving has been to value all that I know, humbly realistic I have read a few books or nearly a thousand, but I don't want my teenager to know that I know on book smarts or anything. So I often say and ask, “I don't know. What do you think?”

And this morning I had cultivated a leisurely breakfast, knowing 100 percent that an entirely brave new nature's world of history, culture, photography, hiking, and environmentalism were a few minutes away, a brief car drive from where we sat. The hopeful goal was to help Darien experience a brand new nature discovery on his own terms. Standing at the Grand Canyon's panoramic vista, he looked happily stunned a grateful grin on his face.

We hiked for a while before I even asked.

“How is this environment experience?”

“Impressive,” he said quietly.

Several months later we again sat at a breakfast table, in a rental house in Kapa'au, Hawai'i. He was making a point clearly.

“I just don't want anyone speaking for my experience,” he said huffily.

“And I so get that,” I said.

Darien's white lesbian Mama can own her space when I chant to myself a truthful mantra: I don't know.

“You mean you don't want your middle-aged white Mama speaking for what her Black son's experience might be?”

The laugh had to go there and so he brought one. “Pretty much,” he smiled despite himself.

“We can agree to agree then. I would much rather listen to you describe your experience yourself,” I replied.

Unlike at Grand Canyon's Mather Campground bench table that summer morning, Darien left these breakfast dishes for me to clear and scurried, without responding, to get ready for school. The conversation had been honest so I picked up the housekeeping slack is how I rationalized the moment.

The challenge is that I often don't know what Darien is thinking. The fine art of raising a male youth teenager in America is to encourage him to talk. About any subject he finds intriguing. And so I have organized an adventurous camping exploration that begins in Monterey, California. Traveling across myriad states, the pathfull journey is a west to east coast mapping. Eventually in late August we will gather for laughs and joyful reconnecting with family at a Cape Cod campground in Massachusetts.

Rejuvenated after a respite, we then embark on the return trek across the United States. Having gone full-circle, we are waking up one morning for breakfast at a house our Garrett family has owned since 1972 in Monterey. During these travels I will be listening and often saying a few words that free me into being mindful: I do not know.

A cultural shift is that during our family's travel time, first week of June until last week in November 2025, a video game culture will be mostly absent. We are going into creative space to see how Darien fares, still connecting with his peers, simply through venues other than video games. Maybe he builds a You Tube channel? When we reconnect to smart phones, a Facetime call with friends and family perhaps? Could he go epistolary and write a letter on paper, sending via snail mail? Radical acts of kindness still exist on this earth is what I observe. And my point is not anti-video gaming.

What I address is immersion in nature as another epistemology—that is, encouraging the teenager in our family to articulate what he observes during travels in nature environments. This epistemic knowledge is his to describe. Structuring the travels is a simple way I can organize the process. And so I can listen to Darien.

From his Mama's perspective books are still a unique, helpful method to continue staying open to the world. Responding to them is a discovery on finding ways to articulate ideas. Being also immersed in books facilitates ways of talking for describing new experiences across our travels. We have four books decided for the road trip:

The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents, Guiding Your Children to Success and Fulfillment by Deepak Chopra (1997);

Stamped—Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi (2020) Youth version;

Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) youth version;

Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014) youth version.

Along the way I am reading a dozen or so books that focus on American youth culture. And clearly Darien selects his own reading for any subject he wishes.

books on racism, parenting, indigenous culture, and plant knowledge

Planning this road trip has zero random to the process. While observing youth culture in our house these last several years, I realize that screen time is the ubiquitous way to communicate. Celebrating the generational difference—I was in middle school 1978 through 1980—I have respected a changing cultural techie gap. In the house where I grew up, we only had the landline phone. No computers at all and on Sundays watching one hour of television qualified as enough “screen time” according to my parents.

Point being that in this life passage I am now the parent and I have a vision for how to raise my kid. Focusing especially true given my lesbian Mama perspective; in lesbian land, kids are not often accidentally birthed! So Darien's 9th grade fall semester now has a brief road trip school-on-wheels design during which I hope to share my knowledge. After we return, he will be immersed in peer youth culture and high school dynamics. Yet the traveling window of time and space and focus is a conscious parenting choice to go the less ventured path and also to acknowledge that after this season of family experience, my Mama years have thoroughly been preparing Darien to be on his own. And I am so grateful for the supportive chance to go there.

Continually a fan of zany strategies to see outside the box, we have a few grounding guidelines that will be held during the traveling months. Them be the following:

maintaining the daily as in grocery shop, set up tents, wash laundry at camp, organize items, cook, wash dishes and all the practical detail that bring a day easily forward are divided equitably; if a chore goes undone then consequences be faced and learned for next time
phoning it in is out, which means that several months ago I bought a large paper map for offline guidance (imagine?!) and even bolder, asking questions of real live people when wandering lost
powering off phones during the day when adventuring to nature areas and returning lightly when in urban zones
driving 125 miles in any given day and that is all, folks (stepping away from the vehicle)

One question readers might have is what in the world am I thinking? Simplicity. For a decade in college classrooms I supported young adults striving to succeed in college. And I saw how many find the path too difficult simply because of the practicals: laundry, food, time management, health choices (meditation), finance health, and ways to communicate offline. Putting the phone down and the video gaming away to knock on a neighbor's door: I do not know how to operate a washing machine. Do you have a minute?

Sounds so incredibly basic yet owning a full day, the long stretch of making thoughtful decisions on behalf of your own self-care, is continually a learning process for youth and the rest of us lifelong learners. What I strive for is observing Darien acquire life skills during the road trip; he will be his own leader in the process. We have one magnificent adventure for our family, a time that I get to practice a question asked in a favorite book The Courage to Change: “If I don't know how to respond to a situation today, why not try responding with kindness?”