Adrift
One morning in March we packed up our life and left LA driving some 400 odd miles north as winter was making her final curtsy into spring — slowly unfurling her skirt full of flowers across the treetops and bushes dotted along the fast moving freeway, a denser green growing as we moved further up the state.
To break up the drive, we spent a night in Fresno at a motel where we had a picnic on the king size bed — heaping plates of Pad Thai noodles and veggie fried rice — greasy and fulfilling after the long drive, tall cans of ice cold Pacifico to cool our throats, Remi scooping mouthfuls of almond butter with a little plastic spoon straight from the jar for dessert.
We slept all 4 of us (our dog Izzy included) on the big bed — exhaustion pressing our bodies into crisp sheets, a deep sleep wrapping its arms around us. A sleep about more than just tiredness. Sleep like floating on a raft down an ancient river, effortless and uncomplicated. Adrift — a familiar feeling I hadn’t felt in while, also known as Freedom. Also known as Adventure.
The next morning we gathered croissants and coffee and drove the rest of the way up.
Since then it’s been cousins and chaos and dogs stealing bites of food and scraped knees and muddy feet and sun kissed cheeks and tear stained cheeks and strawberry stained lips and tangled hair and tiny finger nails packed with dirt like tiny crescent moons.
Imperfect, unbridled, joyous.
In other words, messy but the good kind of messy. In other words, we’re tired but the good kind of tired.
Some days when the sun is beginning to set and the dishes are washed and put away, that ever riotous urgency of the children slows and a tender curiosity takes place as they look for lizards beneath leaves or inspect the pebbles in the bird bath. Suddenly quiet, I can hear the wind moving through the mossy oaks that surround the house. And in that little pause I have just enough time to think; my god, we did it. We changed. We picked ourselves up and changed our life because we had to, because we could.
If I’m being honest, I don’t really know what the plan is from here. If I’m being honest, there’s something about not having a plan that feels really good. Maybe we’ll stay a while. Maybe an apartment in Tokyo, a flat in Paris, a cottage somewhere in the South. I used to daydream like this, I miss my mind being this way. Things aren’t easy but they’re starting to open up again.