walking away together

When I told my mom our plans for our AT trek, she joked that Polina should start in Maine, I should start in Georgia and we could finish together at the Harper’s Ferry halfway point. My mom, like most of our friends and family, probably picked up on the Billy Goat’s and Little Pony’s shared personality traits: passion mixed with a little bit of stubbornness—and extreme sensitivity, despite our semi-tough exteriors. My mom’s implicit message was that two people with these same qualities spending that much time over that much distance over such conditions were due for a relationship meltdown--and we haven't even married two years, much less reproduced. She should talk: when her and my dad go for a walk “together”, they amble out the door, up the driveway and onto the road Then she takes a left, he takes a right, and away they go. It must somehow work; they’ve been married 40+ years. We don’t intend to start back-to-back at Harper’s Ferry and go our separate ways, nor will we start at opposite ends of the trail. But metaphorically speaking, we expect that our adventure will accomplish both—get us better at meeting each other halfway and also knowing when it’s OK to walk away.