The Long & Winding Road
Becky Thurner, Web Columnist
We’ve all heard the parable of the prodigal son; in fact, we Orthodox hear it every year just before Great Lent as we prepare for the fast by contemplating forgiveness and repentance. Anyway, we know how he took his cushy life for granted, had the nerve to ask his father for an early distribution of his inheritance so that he could squander it away on loose living and wild women, and finally how, as he was slopping the pigs, realized what a blind fool he’d been and made his sorry way back home.
And how his father, rather than shaking his finger with that proverbial parental "I told you so" drip-drip-drip kind of guilt, gratefully welcomed his wayward son home with a celebration fit for a king. We’re not told why this son wanted to go off on his own like this; obviously Holy Scripture is not concerned with the machinations of a rebellious teenage kid. And we do not know the details of his squandering, just as most parents are thankfully unaware of everything their kids are doing once they leave home. What we do know is that all that bad stuff can be forgiven. I know, because I was a prodigal daughter. In one of our hymns, the prodigal sings "…all the wealth you gave to me, I have in wickedness squandered…." This could be my song as well, though the wealth that I squandered was not money, but rather the Faith and love I had been given from my earthly parents and my heavenly Father.
Let me give you a glimpse of how my journey started. I was raised in a loving Orthodox home with a mom and a dad (who became a deacon at the tender age of 74) who have always been hopelessly in love. I have an older sister and a younger brother whom I am best friends with, and when we are all together for holidays or vacations have a ridiculously fun time. But in my teens, instead of embracing that love and structure, I felt burdened, oppressed and resentful of all the religious restrictions. Though my parents have always had a busier social life than any couple I know, church always came first for them, which meant for me as well. I guess it was when my dates had to start picking me up from vespers every Saturday (except of course during Great Lent when I wasn’t allowed to date at all) that I finally went over the edge.
So when I was 20 and halfway through Ohio State University, I decided to leave my cushy life behind, though I knew better than to ask for an early inheritance. Not that I wanted one anyway…in fact, the poorer I was, the better. After plunking down $250 for a clunker car, my girlfriend and I set off for Cape Cod, Massachusetts in May of 1974, with no idea what we were going to do for money, or even where we would live. I can only imagine how my parents slept at night. Of course, I didn’t attribute our safe arrival to God or guardian angels, despite the fact that it wasn’t more than a couple days after having completed its mission that the clunker flat out died. And of course, left us carless.
Actually, this was even better because it was one fewer possession, one fewer object that connected me to the "normal" world I had left behind. It also meant that I had to hitchhike to work everyday to and from the job I found 20 miles away, taking care of 3 children for a nurse who had to work full-time because her husband had just left her for another woman. She was desperate, and I was about the only thing she could afford: $35 for a 40 hour work week.
But what did I need money for? I had no rent, because I was living in a tent. Not just any old tent, but one you could stand up in with a cot, two bookshelves (holding the likes of Kahlil Gibran and Ken Kesey) and a Coleman lantern. A cabin down the path that some friends were living in afforded me the privilege of an outdoor shower, an indoor toilet, and an occasional hot meal. So I raced sailboats, stopped shaving, and did what all self-respecting hippies did back then, and it probably wasn’t all that different from what the prodigal son occupied himself with.
You’re probably wondering how long it took for me to come to my senses. Well, we don’t know how long he took, but it was 14 years for me. Of course I didn’t live in the tent all that time. It got pretty chilly around September, and I had the nerve to call my parents and ask for a ride back home. I wasn’t repentant, I wasn’t humbled, I was simply cold. I’m sure they were just thankful that I was alive, so they bit their tongue and drove from Ohio to get me, only to find out that my plan was to go back to campus and work until I could earn enough money to move to Berkeley, California. It took me three months, and then I asked them for another ride: to the bus station…on Christmas Eve.
That was when I truly left my family. I don’t remember any contact with them for probably a year; my 21st birthday came and went, and if I felt any emptiness at all, I surely didn’t fill it with apologies, remorse or prayers to the Holy Trinity. When a friend stole $80 from my purse during a particularly crazy Halloween party, I came out of the fog enough to know it was time to leave Berkeley, and headed south to Los Angeles where I lived in an apartment at the base of the big HOLLYWOOD sign on the hill. It was in a crummy neighborhood, and there was a bullet hole in my living room window. I still thought it was all wonderfully adventurous.
Not wanting to be totally committed to anything, I got a job through a temporary agency working as a secretary for a scrap metal company on the outskirts of the city. It took three buses to get there, and by the third one, I was the only Caucasian and the only female. But I had my journal and they left me alone as I scribbled away, and everyday was a new story. My brother, Allan, and a couple old friends came out to live with me; my brother’s first job was in the garment district and on his first night, found out that his co-worker was a junkie. There was no end to this world outside of my safe hometown of Brecksville, Ohio.
But after a couple years and a bad relationship, it was time to get out of Dodge, and my brother and I moved to the beaches of San Diego; a little safer, a little more normal, and normal didn’t look quite so dismal anymore. My sister Alex, and her son and husband lived there, and slowly but surely, with her older-sister love and support, the road became less winding. I worked, took classes and eventually met a man who I would marry just a few months later in a grove of giant eucalyptus trees in beautiful Balboa Park. We wrote our own ceremony which was officiated by a Baptist minister, and though Rob wore a tux, my dress was a $29.99 La Jolla street bargain.
And who was there at my wedding, laughing and dancing after having met Rob only the week before? My parents, who never gave up, never stopped biting their tongue, never said a word when they would visit and we would sleep while they went to Divine Liturgy. But most importantly, they never stopped praying, and only now that I have a daughter in college and a son soon to be, do I realize that this was what saved me during all those years.
Alex never quit inviting me to church, and though it took awhile, I finally let my barriers down and made my sorry way back. And just like the father of the prodigal son, it was with open arms and grateful hearts to God that I was welcomed back home.