Day Thirty-Eight: Stony Point, NY to Northampton, Massachusetts

This is it. Our final day of travel. My second cross-country drive and I still haven't made it to the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices in Minneapolis. Sigh. You don't get everything you want in this world, that's clear.

When this trip/move/uprooting/change/career slaying decision was still just a possibility, people were fond of telling me it sounded like a good idea – if we were in our 20s and had no kids. I wondered at this kind of reaction. Sooooo, the message we want to pass on to our children is stay safe at any cost? If you are unsatisfied, settle. Don't take any risks, and don't do anything hard. When we tell my mother-in-law that Mike can work remotely for his California job through the rest of the year and she says, “And then what??” I expect it. Fear is a mighty and pervasive companion. But, let me put out a mild advisory to the rest of you. Think about what drives your decisions.

As we approach Massachusetts, I grow more and more melancholy. Because trite metaphor follows me like gum on a shoe, there are storm clouds hanging in the sky.

It rained all night last night. Quiet at first, then the trees grew heavy holding too much to themselves and opened their arms to share. And the lightning came.

Isaac, who sleeps on the “second floor” of the van, under the canvas pop up part was not at all in favor of the weather. He and Mike traded places, so I had my little guy with me and in need of cuddles. Hannah – his bedtime lovey – was afraid too, he told me. His tooth was loose and he was afraid of swallowing it in his sleep. So many fears piling up, coming to roost with just this sound of water, the sky giving back.

So often gifts are misconstrued as threats, as if in each of us there lies a Trojan horse waiting to spring terror onto us. Way back in Sedona, when Emily got out and was sitting out of sight on top of the van transmission for three hours and Isaac had to go to bed without knowing if his beloved cat was ever coming back, I told him some secrets of a philosophy I'd been introduced to myself relatively recently. It was time for me to try them out on someone else. I told him that the Universe is kind and wants to help us. That there is more good than “bad” in the world.

He stopped sobbing for a moment and asked me, startled, “There is??” Maybe he believed me. I can hope. Maybe I believed me, too.


I really must thank all the friends that put us up and put up with us along the way -- Christine, Heather, Mark, Sheila & Paul, Lisa & Scott, Barb & Chris, and John. We love you guys and we miss everyone back in MRY!!