How Lucky I Am
On November 7, 2025, Ann and I were driving Tin to boarding school in Arizona. We stopped in Las Cruces, NM and took a detour to go see a giant roadrunner sculpture made out of garbage. As fascinating as it was, and it was, we were in the parking lot of the welcome center when Ann thought she spotted a chicken running underneath the cars. A young man, Asian, handsome, long jet black hair, stood beside a Sprinter van eating a small bowl of granola and he said, “That’s a roadrunner.” From somewhere along the parked cars, a woman walked up behind us and said, “It’s pregnant.” Right then and there we learned that spotting a roadrunner is lucky, spotting a pregnant roadrunner is double lucky.
We felt the vibe! The Hopi and other Pueblo tribes of the American southwest see roadrunners as “medicine birds” which have the power to protect against evil spirits. Seeing a roadrunner is considered good luck and given their speed, they could symbolize rapid progress towards your goals or swift passage through difficulties.
I was beyond excited to be in the presence of a roadrunner – an affirmation of my luck (the trend has been my friend and so many things have been happening that are miraculous and life affirming and transformative including driving my son to boarding school in Arizona). So many things were going to happen that would keep proving this but I’ll save that for later.
Ann and I took Tin to the ranch and then segued to our journey home, where we spotted our second roadrunner jetting across a four-lane highway. At this point, luck was entrenched in our theme.
When we got back, Ann made a graphic of a roadrunner with Lucky written across it and made a tee shirt for Tin as a holiday gift. She made me a collage, which I now keep on my table to see every day as a reminder.
I was in Arizona visiting Tin for our monthly trip. These trips, the calls, the letters seem to tangle me up with so many emotions it is hard to pull a thread without me unraveling. Which I did at the airport on the way back. It’s one of those: I’m leaving my son across the country and going back to my empty house, I’m sure he is in the right place, but it never feels quite right. The travel alone is taking a mighty toll on my bank account as evidenced by my card getting declined at the Gap where I was buying him two tee shirts to replace the too small ones he had brought.
The physical travel takes a toll too: I am out of my routine, sitting on too soft sofas, sleeping in too soft beds, moving from one crammed airline seat to another. The journey to visit my son who made me a mother involves stepping away from that role – I was not prepared for this part – as a fellow ranch mother said to me about her grief, “I thought I had a few more years of mothering him left.”
The penultimate day while I was in Tucson, we were walking out of the Air BnB, when Tin spotted a roadrunner across the street. “Roadrunner,” he shouted and pointed. We both walked towards it as it dashed like the cartoon roadrunner from one end of the yard to the other and disappeared into the bushes. I crossed the street and into the yard, and the man seated outside his house next door, behind a thicket of cactus said. “That’s only the second time I’ve seen one in my life. They don’t like the city.”
I am constantly reinventing my perspective – I’m lucky to have become Tin’s mother, despite the grief that it has not been as I had envisioned – to raise a child with a partner, to go through all the touchstones of school, family vacations, and all the life experiences that fall under “normal” – yet, I am lucky to have had this experience. Tin, my son, makes me a better person every day. That is why I balled my eyes out from the Tucson airport all the way back across the country to the Gulfport airport and home. That is why I am crying now.
I’m sure everyone on those planes thinks I have Covid because I sniffled, blew my nose, and kept my hoodie over my red eyes throughout the entire trip. None knew how LUCKY I really am.
