The bus was parked on the church parking lot, and the kids were running around, throwing their bags into the storage under the bus, laughing and swapping stories about what they were going to do once they got out of their parents’ sights.

I sat in the window seat, biting my lip. And I cried.

It wasn’t as much that I didn’t want to go to the confirmation camp, I hardly knew what it was, and besides, everybody went in the 1980s. So we’d listen to Bible stories during day, and play ping pong and swap jokes at camp fire at night. And of course there were the pranks. I knew it would probably be fun, that I’d make friends, and that it was for only two weeks.

I wasn’t even thinking about any of that, though. I just didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay at home.

A year later, I somehow told myself that I wanted to go on a language course in England. Some of my friends went to Brighton and Bournesmouth, I chose Oxford. Mom and Dad dropped me off at the Helsinki airport, and off I went. Crying.

I remember sitting on the front seat of the bus that took the class from the Gatwick airport to Oxford late at night. I just stared at the dark road in front of us, thinking how different everything looked when you were driving on the left side of the road. I couldn’t understand how I could have been stupid enough to go on a four-week trip like that, on my own, when – from what I could hear from behind me on the bus – everybody else had at last one buddy with them.

I may have cried a little.

I cried when Wife and I moved got in our car when we moved to Finland. And when Wife and I and Son moved back to Sweden two years later. I cried the night before I took off for the a three-week trip to the hockey World Championship in Canada. I cursed myself for agreeing to do the Olympics and the World Championships within three months from each other. And my lower lip was shaking violently when I snuck out the front door early May morning to catch a taxi to the airport.

My Grandma, my paternal grandmother died during my trip to Oxford. So, while I was making new friends, hanging out at the language course disco, learning Italian, playing soccer in the park, and observing the university students go on a tear in the town – the things I couldn’t imagine on my way out – my father lost his last surviving parent, his mother.

They told me about it the day before I was due back. “We didn’t want to spoil your trip,” Dad said.

Three years later, I went to Harbor Beach, Michigan, on a Rotary summer exchange program. I had just graduated from high school, and much more mature and, well, cosmopolitan. So I cried just a little, but off I went. Six wonderful – in hindsight – weeks later, I came back to Finland, wearing a jeans vest, and Van Halen’s 5150, Journey’s Raised on Radio in my suitcase. My parents welcomed me back with open arms, and then they told me that my high school buddy, our neighbour’s son, had died in a freak accident at his summer job.

When I then took a summer job in Orillia, Ontario, Canada a few years later, I was afraid I had put a curse on somebody I knew. That maybe life at home wouldn’t be paused like a movie waiting for my return. Turns out, life did go on for full three months without me, and that nobody had died.

About a month after my trip to Harbor Beach, Michigan, I moved out of my parents’ house. I had packed my VW Beetle, and had parked it right outside our front door, almost ready to go. Mom and Dad were standing just outside the door as I hopped in.

“Don’t you worry about us, kid, we’ll be fine,” I heard Dad yell.

I waved back and drove slowly towards the main street. Crying. As usual, I was fine once I hit the road. Mostly I weep for those left behind. Poor suckers, having to deal with life without me. I don’t know how they do it. Really, I don’t. I’ve never had to do it.