Today was the first day of Young Writers Camp. Nearly eighty kids showed up on a rainy Pittsburgh morning carrying backpacks, water bottles, and nervous energy. Some found each other immediately. A conversation about K-Pop somehow turned into a conversation about squirrels. I couldn’t follow either topic, which felt like a reminder that I am no longer in middle school. Other kids sat quietly, reading, writing, scrolling on their phones, or looking around the room trying to figure out where they fit.

Honestly, if you’d dropped twelve-year-old Molly into a room with eighty strangers and told her to make friends, I probably would have looked like I was about to throw up.

After the journal decorating and the annual challenge of applying contact paper without destroying everything in sight, we broke into groups. My seventh and eighth graders were handed a poem written in French. Nobody spoke French. That was the point.

The assignment was simple: translate the poem without using technology.

The reaction was immediate.

“I don’t know what it means.”

A few kids snuck looks at their phones under the table. Others stared at the page, waiting for understanding to arrive. Eventually one of the teachers asked a different question.

“What do you think it means?”

At first the guesses came reluctantly. Maybe that word means river. Maybe face. Maybe love. Maybe night. Maybe travel. The room slowly shifted. The pressure began to lift. The students stopped trying to be correct and started trying to be curious.

By the end, they had created poems about rivers, lonely travelers, moody counts wandering through the dark, and all sorts of things the original poet may or may not have intended.

None of the poems were accurate.

All of them were interesting.

I’ve been thinking about that exercise all day because it made me wonder where else in my life I’ve been waiting for certainty before I’m willing to begin.

One place that immediately came to mind was my nephew.

When he was little, we were incredibly close. For a period of time we even lived together. We skied together, made ridiculous movies together, played outside for hours, and delighted in each other’s company. Airport reunions looked like something out of a movie. He’d spot me, drop whatever he was carrying, and sprint. There would be a giant hug and a level of excitement that made me feel like the most important person in the world.

Nothing really prepares you for being someone’s favorite person.

And nothing prepares you for watching that change.

Not because anything bad happened. Not because there was a fight or a falling out. Life simply kept moving.

Middle school arrived.

Then high school.

Then college.

The reunions became less dramatic. The conversations became less frequent. The distance didn’t happen all at once. It happened the way distance usually happens—gradually, almost invisibly, until one day you realize you’re standing much farther apart than you used to be.

I think about him often. More often than he probably knows.

Sometimes I find myself wondering whether we’ll find our way back to each other. Sometimes I wonder if we’re supposed to. Mostly I wonder what happened to all that ease.

The truth is, I’ve struggled to find common ground as he’s gotten older. Our worlds are different now. His interests are different. His life is different. He’s building a future that belongs entirely to him, which is exactly what he’s supposed to be doing.

And yet, somewhere along the way, I think I started waiting.

Waiting until he got older.

Waiting until he got through high school.

Waiting until he finished college.

Waiting until adulthood somehow translated our worlds back into a language we both understood.

I’ve been waiting for fluency.

Waiting until I know what to say.

Waiting until the conversation feels natural again.

Waiting until I understand the terrain.

But what if relationships work more like that French poem?

What if nobody knows exactly what it means?

What if connection isn’t something we discover once we understand each other perfectly?

What if it’s something we build through a series of imperfect guesses?

A text message.

A phone call.

A letter.

A question.

A story.

A small attempt to say, “I’m still here.”

The students didn’t create anything until they stopped demanding certainty. They had to be willing to misunderstand the poem. They had to be willing to guess. They had to be willing to be wrong.

Maybe relationships require the same courage.

Maybe the greatest risk isn’t saying the wrong thing.

Maybe it’s waiting so long for the right thing that we never say anything at all.

I don’t know exactly what language my nephew speaks these days. I don’t know all the interests, references, worries, dreams, and experiences that make up his world. But maybe understanding isn’t the prerequisite for connection I’ve been pretending it is.

Maybe connection comes first.

Maybe fluency is what grows afterward.

And maybe the question isn’t whether I know how to translate the poem.

Maybe the question is whether I’m willing to pick up the pen and begin.