Zugunruhe, and the Rite of Sending Your Kid Off to College

Behind that closed door, his bedroom is vacant, and I’ve been avoiding it all weekend.

Google the word zugunruhe (pronounced ZOO-goon-ROO-ah) and you’ll get explanations like this: “Zugunruhe, a German word, refers to the migratory restlessness observed in birds before their seasonal journeys.” A bird feels the impending journey, anticipates its arrival. What signals this restlessness is a mystery that scientists are still attempting to unlock, but put a bird in a windowless, sensory-deprived enclosure and it will still exhibit all the fidgety signs of a purposeful departure.

It’s November, and I’m holding my son’s acceptance letter from a college five vast states away from home. I’m overcome with a father’s pride, but there’s something mingled with it, a sober gravity, and my heart feels simultaneously higher and lower in my chest. Between the lines on the page, there’s a different sort of acceptance letter: the inevitable scene of a final hug in some dorm room hall, a trembling-voice exhortation to stay in touch, and a solemn trip home alone, leaving my firstborn to his next adventure without me. Holding the letter, I feel all those dad emotions rising to the surface… and I promptly put a lid on them. Not just any lid; mine is stainless steel with a bungee cord and a bearproof latch. I’m not ready for this. But I will be.

Actually, no, I’m pretty sure we’re never ready for this.

---

“In accordance with their inherited calendars, birds get an urge to move. When migratory birds are held in captivity, they hop about, flutter their wings, and flit from perch to perch just as birds of the same species are migrating in the wild. The caged birds ‘know’ they should be travelling too.”

Each day is twenty-four hours closer to the move. It’s now summer, and I try to seize every possible opportunity to savor another moment with him. We play board games, head to the gym, stay up late watching a movie. We take a family trip out west. With just a week remaining, I suggest the two of us go camping, and we drive four hours north to explore, hike, build a campfire. The car ride there and back is filled with road trip music and meaningful conversation and unsolicited driving advice. We both know the goodbye is coming. Just a week remaining to say everything a father still hopes to say.

Cleaning his room, one corner at a time, is an archaeological dig of childhood memories. Phases and fads. Light sabers evolve into Nerf darts, which evolve into airsoft rifles. We dig deeper into the recesses of his bedroom closet and laugh over random trinkets and remember-whens. Trash pile. Giveaway pile. “A time to keep and a time to throw away” (Ecclesiastes 3:6). We remember and enjoy, and then we let them go.

---

“Zugunruhe is borrowed from German, a compound word meaning migratory restlessness, or more literally translated as ‘migration anxiety.’”

My son takes another couple boxes downstairs to load into the car, and I’m left in the bedroom alone for a moment, gathering some assorted items into a plastic bin. The lid is secure. And then I look up for a moment and it isn’t.

The light plays differently on these bare walls, and they feel lonely. Strewn along the baseboard lie ribbons for speech meets and perfect attendance and the Pinewood Derby. A few fishing lines hang from the ceiling, once supporting the Styrofoam planets of a father-son solar system. The bottle collection has been discarded. The Lego displays have been boxed up in the closet. The bass guitar and amp have been loaded into the car. This room doesn’t feel right. It’s too much to take in. I think of Miss Havisham in Dickens’ Great Expectations freezing everything at the moment of her loss, stopping all the clocks at twenty till nine. If this moment had a pause button I would hit it right now.

---

“Birds experiencing zugunruhe may exhibit increased hopping, fluttering of wings, and exploration, often towards the direction of their migration. Birds held in captivity will orient in the direction of their migratory flight and commence wing fluttering.”

The two of us say a prayer and head west in a car packed proficiently from years of playing Tetris. We’re breaking the trip into two days, prolonging the inevitable. We share the driving, and the passenger chooses the tunes. There are two songs on my heart, and I’ve pictured the moment when I would share them with him, explain their profound significance to this moment, share my heart of hearts. But I can’t bring myself to play them because I fear the awkwardness of the moment, and I know they will get past my bearproof latch in a half-second. I’m too proud to lift the lid right now. I remember my own college move-in day many years ago, and my mom’s faithful help. She kept it together emotionally, although she told me later that she cried the whole way home. Her composure was a gift to me, permitting my genuine excitement without the guilt of breaking her heart. I want to give that same gift to this moment.

That, and also I’m too proud.

If I could lift the lid for just a moment, and just hit play on my iPhone, the moment’s perfect words would sound like this:

When I look at you, boy

I can see the road that lies ahead

I can see the love and the sorrow

Bright fields of joy

Dark nights awake in a stormy bed

I want to go with you, but I can't follow

So keep to the old roads

Keep to the old roads

And you'll find your way

It's what I want to say, but the moment never seems to materialize. “A time to be silent and a time to speak” (Ecclesiastes 3:7). My inability to discern which is which will leave these words unplayed. My good intentions skip to the next track.

So you know who you are

And you know what you want

I've been where you're going

And it's not that far

It's too far to walk

But you don't have to run

You'll get there in time…

And when you need it most

I have a hundred reasons why I love you

No, I can’t bring myself to play that one either.

---

There is a moment just before a flock of Arctic Terns lifts off from their northern nests and flies south to Antarctica. A reverential hush falls over the entire colony, a moment of silence, stillness like a congregational prayer. Scientists have given a strange term to this phenomenon. They call it a ‘dread.’

The dorm room is remarkably small, and every possible furniture layout that we try proves to be two inches too tall, too wide, or too long; nonetheless we create a comfortable space to call home, and I can tell he loves it. It’s not much, but it’s his flag in the sand on the beachhead of a new frontier, complete with a mini-fridge.

The minutes are ticking incessantly, and we both know that at 4:30 PM the students will go to their orientation and the parents will go to their info meeting, and in the awkward void of that fork in the road there will be an impossibly quick goodbye. We fill the remaining hours with lunch and purposeful words and a Walmart run — the sacred and the ordinary. There is still no pause button in sight.

My son’s favorite verse is Isaiah 43:19:

“Behold, I am doing a new thing;

       now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

        I will make a way in the wilderness

                and rivers in the desert.”

One day when the skies part with trumpet sound and our savior calls us by name, all our worldly ribbons will fall to the baseboard. Do you feel the restless anticipation of our migration? Do you find your wings humming and your hearts orienting themselves in the direction of the Kingdom Come? We are pilgrims of the zugunruhe, awaiting a way in the wilderness to a world without goodbyes, springing forth with all things made new. The “new thing” of the resurrection was the down payment on that future reality — a savior who left the comforts of home to conquer a cross and a tomb. And until that day, God does a new thing every day, like mercies new every morning (Lam. 3:23), or hearts made new creations (2 Cor. 5:17) — and I know he is doing astounding new things as my son launches into this new moment.

Burrell and Son, a week before liftoff

After a too-brief convocation, 4:30 arrives, and the students are dismissed to meet their RA’s. I’ve had nine months to prepare for this moment and yet I feel rushed. I try to sum up a summer’s worth of conversations in one sentence, but all that comes out is, “Ask questions — drive safe — keep in touch — I love you.”

I fly home and he flies forward. Back at home, the bedroom door is still shut because I know my emotions are raw enough to trigger at the slightest provocation: a stray photo, a vacation souvenir, a sheet of old homework. The door is closed but the lid is off, and God is faithful to all the feels.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). And so we can savor each season of parenting — including the restless season of new beginnings.

---

If you’ve been there, watching your migration-ready child leave the nest, share your advice in the comments, would you?