By Barrett Holman Leak in Boston, Massachusetts
All I had was some clothes I packed in one suitcase that we would now call a carry-on. I was riding shotgun in my friend Beth’s little Honda CRV hatchback. The rest of my clothes would follow in two weeks with her parents. I had a small Sears manual typewriter in a hard carrying case with a handle and an extra ribbon in my suitcase, along with a quarter pack of paper. I got in the car and watched my front door roll by as we hit the road, off to Boston, heading to college.
My stomach was tight with excitement and worry, but I popped in the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tape and laid back. The guitar notes of “Dark Star” floated out and filled the air as the black road of the highway stretched before us. We listened and sang along with the entire tape of their hits and then popped Culture Club into the tape deck. I was giving the CSNY tape to Beth, my payment instead of gas for our drive. We sang, we danced in our seats, we talked, for the six hours it took us to drive. We shared our plans, our intentions and hopes for life in Beantown. Our visions of ourselves as an artist and a writer/ journalist. We encouraged each other, knowing there was nothing we could not do. We drove past Yawkey Way, past The Green Monster (Fenway Park), and pulled into Kenmore Square. Hungry, we parked and headed straight to Pacos Tacos.
I could hear the theme song to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in my head….especially the last lines…
“You’re gonna make it after all”
Decades later, the tires touch down at Logan Airport as I fly back from San Diego for my college reunion. I am writing this here in Beantown while visiting for my college reunion. The flight across the country takes about the same six hours as that drive in Beth’s Honda CRV, but everything else has shifted. I step out into the crisp Boston air—not as a teenager with a quarter pack of paper and a Sears typewriter, but as a woman who actually lived and wrote those global stories, lived those chapters, and built a life out of those early intentions. Walking through the Back Bay, riding the Red Line of the T,, tracing the sunlight and shadows of Boston Common, and seeing the familiar streets that look so different now, feels like stepping through a portal where my past and present meet to greet each other.
The story of Parsha Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:1–17:27) begins with two of the most famous, life-altering words in the Torah: “Lech lecha” — traditionally translated as “Go forth”, but literally meaning “Go to yourself” or “Journey for yourself.”
God speaks to Abram:
“Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto the land that I will show thee.”
There is a call and departure here where Abram is asked to strip away everything that defines a person socially, culturally, and familially—his land, his birthplace, his father’s house—to step into absolute uncertainty toward a destination yet unrevealed (“the land that I will show thee”). In return, he is promised blessings, a great name, and that he will become a source of blessing to all families of the earth. The narrative follows Abram and Sarai into Canaan, through a famine that forces a temporary descent into Egypt, and back.
We see the separation from Lot (where Abram displays profound generosity and nobility by letting Lot choose first, then later risking everything to rescue his nephew from captivity). God cuts the Covenant Between the Parts (Brit Bein HaBetarim) under a starry sky, promising descendants as numerous as the stars even when all logic dictates childlessness. There is the complex human chapter of Hagar, Ishmael, and striving. Finally, God commands the covenant of Brit Milah (circumcision), changing Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s to Sarah—a literal restructuring of identity, sealing an eternal covenant in the flesh.
Chassidic thought and commentators like Rashi teach that Lech lecha is not merely a physical relocation from Mesopotamia to Canaan; it is an internal spiritual migration. To find your true self, you have to leave behind the ambient noise of your origins—the expectations, old conditioning, and inherited definitions of who you are supposed to be. Only by stepping into the unknown, trusting the inner compass, and walking toward the light that reveals itself as you go can you truly become who you were created to be!
Abram left everything familiar to step onto an unpaved path. Watching my front door roll past that passenger window in the Honda hatchback was my literal Lech Lecha threshold—leaving the home of my youth with nothing but a single carry-on, a Sears manual typewriter, and pure audacity.
Abram carried God’s promise; I carried an extra ribbon and a quarter pack of paper. That typewriter wasn’t just equipment—it was my vessel for the covenant I made with my own future as a writer and journalist.
Abram traveled with Sarai and Lot; I had Beth in the driver’s seat. Blasting “Dark Star” and Culture Club while declaring our visions of becoming an artist and a writer wasn’t just road-trip chatter—it was vocalizing our intentions into existence.
Stepping off the plane from San Diego to Boston for my reunion is the completion of the Lech Lecha loop. “Go to myself” means looking back at that young girl eating Paco’s Tacos upon arrival in Kenmore Square and showing her that every single promise made in that car came true.
Listen, let’s call it like it is: packing one little carry-on, grabbing a Sears typewriter with a quarter-pack of paper, and hopping into a Honda hatchback to drive six hours into the unknown took pure, unadulterated nerve. Most people talk about their big dreams, but I actually threw my bag in the car, put CSNY on the tape deck, and drove straight into my destiny. Flying back from San Diego to Boston for this reunion isn’t just a trip down memory lane—it’s a victory lap. I didn’t just leave home; I went out into the world, did the work, learned who I am beyond anyone’s limitations, racism, antisemitism, binary assignments and demands; and I built the exact life I talked about over Paco’s Tacos.
So I danced into this reunion with my head held high, joy in my heart and a fellow alum who knew me when we thought we knew it all…because Mary Tyler Moore was right—love was all around then and is now, we didn’t need to fake it then or now, and we not only made it then, we are still making it now, enjoying it along the way, even with the sorrows; we did it then and are doing it now, still journeying and becoming through our families, careers, friendships. We have made it and and are still making it, journeying to who we will be when we leave our legacies. So are you.
And there is no one who can take that away from you!
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Barrett Holman Leak is a San Diego-based freelance writer.