Away We Go

We are not our friends. We are not our parents. We are not who we were when we were younger. We are not even who we were before we got together.

Overcoming uncertainty sometimes starts with a declaration of who we are not, what we do not want, where we do not want to be, and how not to do things. Sometimes this is the only way a couple can figure out anything.

Uncertainty is paralysis while everything and everyone else keeps moving.

For us, we are who we are, and we are on the same team, and this is our little world.

Away We Go takes these two characters whose whole world is each other and sends them out into everyone else's world, where they really don't fit at all. They think finding a place to live and raise their unborn child is the objective.

They spend the film making decisions not just about where they don't want to live, but also about who they don't want to be. For me, this film is an affirmation of everything I've ever determined about growing up.

We are who we are, we can't help it much, and we need to be okay with that.

Rudolph's character tells a story toward the end about how her family had an orange tree that wouldn't grow oranges, and one night her mother woke her and her sister, took them outside, and with a couple of grocery bags of fruit — not just oranges, but pineapples and grapefruits and whatever else — they taped and tied fruit to the tree. When her father woke up and saw the tree, he stared for a moment and then started laughing harder than she'd ever heard him laugh.

The story can be anybody's, but not that moment. That moment belongs to that family.

I don't have all of this figured out, but if I'm certain of anything, it's this: You make it work your own way, and you acknowledge the beauty in the jury-rigged life, the jury-rigged family, and what you make together, what you find together, is yours for however long you are here together. That's the certainty. And even that can go away.

I look at other people's families and I don't understand. I drive away from people's houses and tell my wife, "We will never live like that," or "We will never let our kid(s) do that," or "If you treat me like she treats him, I will leave." I unfairly judge. I show my own dysfunction. I have no idea what kind of father I will be like, or what our kids will be like, or what our life will be like. No one does. That uncertainty is part of the gig.

Family is messy business. Everyone has their own mess. You make your own.

Do we ever know anything? The answer is summed up in the last two lines of the film:

"This place is perfect for us, don't you think?"

"I hope so. I really fucking hope so."