Backtrack

It’s been too long since I’ve written.  I can always tell when it’s been too long because I start to second-guess myself and avoid the idea of writing and then stalling and stalling and stalling until the inevitable finally occurs.  I can tell it’s been too long when I start to wonder if I should, or if it’s worth it, or if I even need to…when, clearly, I can’t live without it.  So, here I am; enduring and persevering through the insecurities of getting back into the swing of a new normal.

In case you haven’t heard (or are stumbling upon this somehow) I just moved across the country.  Not just me, but my husband and two young daughters (and oh yeah, two cats) as well.  I’ll be rolling out several posts about how this all came about, how we did it, and what life consists of now. 

If you’ve been reading the blog regularly, then you might see a few changes coming.  I’m hoping to start posting more often, though possibly in shorter form.  I, maybe just like you, don’t have gobs and gobs of free time (if you are shrugging at this irrelevance to your own life, then perhaps this blog is not for you after all) and so, I’m hoping to work towards the art of brevity yet meet with you more often.  How does that sound?  (As always, flying by the seat of my jammie pants here.)

Anywho…us Pardys have recently trekked 2,000 miles from California to Tennessee, and are on this-side-of-the-brink of starting a brand, spanking new life.  Crazyville.  It’s still a little much for me to comprehend.

I don’t know where else to start except “move-out day”.  Boy, was it a humdinger.  I had just flown to Kansas to drop my girls off at my folks for a few days while (according to plan) I would fly back to California, load up our lives into a 16-foot Penske truck with my beloved, and haul east.  I had never been away from my girls for more than 24 hours before, so this was new territory for my emotions in a multitude of ways.

I believe this is what you call "to the gills"

Flying back to California was emotional enough.  It hit me upon my descent into LAX that this was, for the last time, my final flight “home to California”.  From this point forward, I would forever be considered a visitor instead of a resident, and that was difficult to accept. 

My husband picked me up from the airport and we set out to have dinner (disregarding that it was already midnight) at our favorite Thai restaurant in LA.  (Please, someone visit Toi Rockin Thai on Gardner and Sunset and send my regards to the Thai Spicy Spaghetti.)  We just had to.  It was our last chance.  Plus, our kids were 1,300 miles away, it just felt wrong to not fit in a date somehow!

When I got home for the last time and walked into our apartment, it became clear to me that I had entered a twilight zone of sorts.  This was not my home.  This was a series of rooms filled with memories and mere remnants of somewhat-recognizable objects.  My emotions were engaged with the location, but my senses were entirely confused by the surroundings.  Boxes and bare carpet.  Disassembled furniture.  Suitcases and cords.  This was a barren land of a life that was ending…and that life was ours, our California life together.  It was sad and weird and uncomfortable.  And it was just the final motivation I needed to force myself to forge through the next 24 hours.  No one would want to stay in that kind of uncomfortability for long.

I won’t relive it entirely.  I can’t.  Waking up the next day to a series of goodbyes and the sheer, physical labor of packing up a moving truck was too much for me to ever want to think about doing again.  It sucked, bottomline.  I had to put my best friends to work, packing and stuffing everything familiar into a giant box on wheels, and then hug them goodbye.  It’s hard to say which I went through more that day – duct tape or tears.  I wanted to take one last look at everyone and everything and engage all my senses into everything I saw so it would be impossible to forget.  I did the best I could.  I hope it was enough to remember.

And then.  Deep breath.  We left.

Tears streaming down my face, I looked out the back window of my car one final time, my sad friends waving and the sun glaring and my vision getting all foggy in my steamy glasses, and I pulled forward and out into the open road that suddenly looked entirely different to me.  The street I had lived on for so many years was now just the road out of town.  It was no longer home. 

Home was many, many miles away.  My heart was going to have to catch-up to it.