Tonight I am grateful to be sitting on a bed in my sister’s house after having driven the last 600 miles of my trip from California. Tomorrow morning I don’t have to drag myself up at 5:30 and get myself together to sit in the car for 10, 12, 14 hours. I’m not sure how long I’ll sleep, but what a luxury to be able to move around in a leisurely fashion without a particular agenda. Soon enough the pace of my life will pick back up, but for tonight and probably for most of tomorrow and part of the weekend, I’ll be somewhat footloose.
This morning I was rolling along the Indiana Toll Road headed for the greater Washington DC metropolitan area. It was a trip that I’d made dozens of times from the time I was a child riding out with my parents and siblings to visit my older sisters who’d moved there for college and career. In later years I made the drive myself, carting my kids out to celebrate Christmas in an every-other-year family tradition. Today’s trip was different; I wasn’t coming here to visit, I am here to live for the foreseeable future. It felt good to know the names of the towns and counties and rivers as I drove across Ohio and Pennsylvania before dropping down into Maryland.
After three days of passing through unknown territories in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa, when we reached Indiana yesterday, I was back in familiar territory. In fact, the terrain began to feel much more like what I’d grown up with by the time we crossed into Iowa from Nebraska. The farms and rolling terrain, the autumn leaves already changing color, and the greenness of the land were comforting in their familiarity. After days of traveling through the brown grass headlands in California, the desert of Nevada, the craggy mountains of Utah and high desert mountain passes in Wyoming, the land flattened and greened up the further east we drove. In Western Ohio one into Pennsylvania and Maryland, I was back up in the mountains again, but these were the greener, less rocky ones that I’d grown familiar with from living 12 years in Pennsylvania and frequently driving down to DC or back and forth to Indiana.
As tired as I was when I dragged myself out of bed this morning from my brother’s house in Indiana, I was anxious to complete this trip. Now that I have it will soon dawn on me that I really have moved myself all the way across the country from what had been my home state for the past seven years. I’ve no doubt that a variety of emotions that I have been keeping at bay for many months now will begin welling up as I realize the enormity of the change I just made. Recently I’d seen a list of the most stressful life events. In reviewing the top stressors, I realized that I had experienced at least a few of them. While very few mentioned moving, a few did. I would certainly add it to my personal list!
I am grateful for traveling mercies today, for having arrived at my destination safe and relatively sound. Over the next few days I’ll transition from living with my sister and her husband to living in my own place. I’ll practice my commute to work a few times before I actually have to do it. I’ll do a dozen things to begin to orient myself to this new place–different traffic gridlock and other urban challenges than I experienced living near a West coast city, but many similarities as well. It’ll be important to establish a routine, like continuing to write in my journal each morning and this blog each night. Right now I need consistency in my life, particularly after the last month or so of uncertainty and upheaval. I look forward to getting into a groove fairly soon. In the midst of it all I’ll be patient and gentle with myself as I take these first steps forward into my new life. Now as I prepare to take my rest it will be with the knowledge that I have arrived at my destination, at least for this phase of my life. I am ready to get on with life and see where it takes me next. For tonight, I rest in gratitude for those things that have sustained me over these many months and look forward with grateful heart toward what’s next.
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