an  ending,  a  beginning—  but most of all, a continuation . . .

A couple of years ago, I spent a summer in New Orleans—my first time there. In New Orleans, magic pretty much throws itself in your face:

When you arrive, the first three things you want to find are a natural grocery store, a gym, and a place to buy some things for your altar. Less than a mile from your apartment, you randomly walk past a converted theater that houses: a natural grocery store, a gym, and a botanica.

You go into a used bookstore trying to decide whether to pick up some gay fiction or a mystery. The first shelf you see is labeled “Gay Mysteries.”

You’re sitting at the counter at brunch next to a guy who owns a real estate company. When you need a place to stay for your last couple of weeks, you text him. He tells you that his girlfriend rents the other half of her double shotgun, and it’s vacant, and they’ll give you a deal since he knows you.

And so on.

Last winter, I spent three months in Atlanta. It was . . . freezing. When it’s freezing in the South, everything shuts down. Doors are sealed tight, everyone is bundled up. It’s less that people are unfriendly during this time than that they are, literally, frigid. It’s hard to extend a warm welcome when you can barely move your lips. Coming from the Bay Area, where cold means fifty degrees, I wondered what the heck I was doing there.

During one of my walks (wearing pretty much every layer I own), I made a decision. “The magic is here,” I decided. “Just like every place has its own magic. You just need to look harder.” So I did—and started seeing flowers where there shouldn’t have been any, and cool connected parks that you could walk past a thousand times if you didn’t happen to go up just the right tiny staircase, and, of course, the one remaining used bookstore in the entire city (no “Gay Mysteries” section, unfortunately).

What does any of this have to do with my kids?

Well, on the practical, superficial level, I’m only able to do these excursions because my kids did me the favor of growing up and moving out. (Thanks, guys!) Being an empty-nester who works from home and lives in a red-hot housing market, where’s it easy to sublet, makes it possible for me to explore different parts of the country—and maybe eventually, the world—living and working in different cities for chunks at a time.

On a deeper, more symbolic level, I think the New Orleans/Atlanta contrast points to this truth: It’s much easier to believe in magic when it’s staring you right in the face. When a Canadian official is whisking you into an invitation-only ceremony. When being mad at your ex turns into a visit to the North Pole. When you see one picture, one time, and know, “They’re the ones.” And they are.

Then your kids move out and start to narrate their own stories, and the temperature drops quite a bit. You make a mental list of all the phone calls you hope you never get—involving hospitals, or jails, or pregnancies, or diseases—let alone heartbreak, or job losses, or school failures, or angry coaches and other adults. You end up getting a fair number of these.

You start to wonder if maybe there was some lucky rabbit’s foot hidden somewhere that got rubbed one too many times and has lost its charm. Or if maybe the past dozen years were just a holding pattern, and your kids’ early life trauma was simply waiting to burst through and rampage around in bull-in-china-shop mode.

You spend a lot of time stressing, and meditating, and not sleeping. You worry about when and whether to step in, how to provide support, how to let them know they’re still your number one and you love them no matter what they’re going through.

And then you get a text: “Your boy got a raise!” and you can just hear the joy at his little ninety-cent bump in pay. And you visit your other son, and he takes you to a mountain vista where he likes to sit and reflect, all because he wants to share that special place with you.

And then two things come to mind: One, they’re doing it. Despite the traumas and dramas and stumbles, they’re getting up and getting through every day in the best way they know how. You remember this line that was hammered during your adoption training: “You’ll do your best, and that’s good enough.” And you realize: They’re also doing their best, and that’s also good enough.

And two: Even when you’re dreading the calls (and there was a couple-week stretch not too long ago where I was dreading every single call, from either kid), they’re calling. They’re keeping you in the loop about the good stuff and, however often, the bad. Even the really bad. Which is, in a weird way, exactly what you hoped for when they headed out the door. They might conveniently forget to mention the new torso tattoo—which you’ll only find out about because of how good your kids are at getting caught. But on balance, they share the important stuff, and you’ll take it.

One morning in New Orleans, I ran into two women on the corner near my apartment. They asked for directions to a famous cafe. I happened to be going there, so I told them to come with me, and we ended up having our coffee and beignets together. They were friends from Nashville, although the white woman now lived in the Southwest, and her black friend lived in Salt Lake City. I mentioned that my son lived in Orem, about forty-five minutes south of S.L.C. As it turns out, so did hers.

Orem has a population of just under 100,000 people. Of those 100,000, approximately two are black. And their parents, strangers until that moment, were sitting together at a coffee shop table in New Orleans.

Further proof that, no matter how far your kids go, your world is small, and the connection remains as strong as ever. And that may be the most magical lesson of all.