Our last stop brought us to Tomahawk, Wisconsin, the small, rural town where I grew up. As we pulled into my childhood hometown, there was a mixture of nostalgia, excitement and a quiet current of nerves running through me. Nicole and I had been carrying a secret through our travels, one that only a handful of close friends we’d visited along the way knew: we were expecting and the time had finally come to share the news with my parents.
I wanted the reveal to feel special, memorable and maybe even a little playful. Over dinner one evening, as we gathered around the table, I slipped the ultrasound photo carefully into my mom’s folded napkin before anyone sat down. My heart was pounding as we all exchanged the usual small talk, how the drive was, how everyone was doing, catching up on family gossip while I silently waited for the moment to unfold.
Throughout the whole dinner was served and conversation flowed, Nicole and I remained cool, remaining undetected. The minutes ticked by, dragging out longer than they typically feel until dinner was over, when finally, my mom unfolded it. The ultrasound picture slid out and landed softly on the table. She picked it up and glanced at it briefly, her brow furrowing in confusion. For a moment, she set it back down, assuming it had somehow found its way into the napkin by accident, a packaging mishap, perhaps.
But then, I saw the gears turning in her head. Her brow furrowed deeper and time seemed to freeze for long moment. She quickly nabbed it back up and set her eyes back on the photo, this time more intently. She read the fine print printed along the top banner. Her face shifted as realization washed over her. She looked up at us, wide-eyed, and with her voice trembling said something along the lines of, "Is this...?" Her eyes welled up and she was overcome with emotion.
My dad, who hadn’t been at the table when she discovered the photo, came rushing over, sensing the surge of emotion. “What’s going on?” he asked, his voice tight with concern, as if fearing the worst. For a moment, the energetic tension in the room was heavy, the kind that hangs just before bad news is about to break. Then my mom handed him the photo. His face shifted instantly, lighting up with surprise, pride, and joy as he realized what it was and joined in the celebration.
The rest of our stay in Tomahawk was a week and a half celebrating the Fourth of July. Every year, small and humble Tomahawk comes alive for Independence Day. People who have moved away return home and the town becomes a vibrant hub of beer drinking, fireworks, and familiar faces. I was able to reconnect with old friends, party out on the boat, and show Nicole the place that shaped my childhood.
I took her to the ice rink where I’d spent countless winters, then cruised down winding, overgrown with vegetation trails through the dense northern woods on my dad’s UTV, a world entirely foreign to her Swiss upbringing.
I introduced her to the humid, cozy, mosquito-thick, lake-strewn wilderness that defines northern Wisconsin and kicked off the holiday with the annual Pow Wow Days Fun Run 10K, a tradition I shared with one of my old college buddies.
I’ve returned to where i grew up many times over the years and each time, I realize that while the Tomahawk remains much the same, I arrive as a different version of myself, realizing it’s not just a place, but also mirror that reflects who i’ve become.
Sometimes I returned simply to visit, riding the momentum of whatever adventure I was chasing at the time. Other times, I came back lost and broken. Yet every time, my parents would be there, arms open, hearts steady, offering a kind of grace that only parents seem to know how to give.
This was one of those check-ins carried by the momentum of adventure, yet beneath it stirred the quiet weight of a deeper goodbye, the ache of standing in the driveway, embracing my parents with that subtle knowing that life was shifting and that when we saw each other again, everything would be different. Each time I stood at that threshold, I believed I had a general understanding of the road ahead. But life, in its quiet wisdom, has a way of humbling us, of gently, and sometimes not so gently, reminding us that we are never fully in control, that the journey is always beyond what we can see.
