The tempest and the calm

Last night I was a tempest. I let the weighty emotions take over, the loud, challenging ones in me met my loud-challenging desire to keep my head up. It took me too long to blow over. But by morning I had slept, and woke to my favorite face in the world.

Today I feel steadied. I just put my paints away for the day while watching rush-hour traffic backed up outside my window. I'm about to make dinner for my family of three. And Mikey just walked in the door.

A calm has set in.

Travellog: Ohio to DC

Open roads and clouds in Pennsylvania

In many ways we feel like we never left. Even though our stint here over three years ago was short, it was gritty and real and left deep impressions on us and our marriage. If we gained some staying power in Italy, we laid our bedrock in Washington DC.

Only 72 hours after saying "I do" I was thousands of miles away from anything familiar. My life felt completely new and foreign. I was a wife now and trying desperately to figure out what that meant for me, for my identity, for my role. I was trying to make the best home I could and look for a job while writing hundreds and hundreds of thank you notes. I was grappling with many of the newnesses that newly weds do but letting much of it fall away as I focused on love and commitment and making dinners without a kitchen. Soon we were both working long hours, living in a place a little rough around the edges, and finding out in a very real way, that we were each others' new everything.

I was thrown in. Sink or swim.

I think we came away sailing.

She kept a small library within reach for the whole drive.

*

About three hours outside the city we hit traffic, and rain, and a text message that made me angry. I wanted to drive. Fast. But instead we rose and fell with the hills and saw mostly red brake lights as we inched (mile-ed) along the highway. It was the darkest point of the drive. Mike patiently sat by my side, probably wishing he was the one behind the wheel and not his raging wife.

As we ate dinner with family Sunday night they asked about the drive, about which point was the worst and whose fault it was. "It was Paige's wasn't it" they said, jokingly (intimating in their sarcasm that the suspected-culprit, Ada, most likely caused the uproars in the car). Mike and I turned to one another, "Yeah. It was Paige." "It was me!"

*

After filling up for the last time I let Mike drive. Because of the traffic, my behind-the-wheel time was less-than therapeutic and handing over the reigns gave me time to close my eyes and find my inner-adult again.

By the time we got to Constitution Avenue I was calm and any sadness or worry or anger I felt faded as the memories surfaced, one after the next, of being in this city as a newly married woman—walking home from the movie theater and wondering if we were lost yet; getting caught in monsoon-like rain and buying new shirts so we wouldn't have to wear our wet ones all night; going to church for the first time at the church on 7th; my first Eastern Market breakfast; riding the bus the completely wrong direction; feeling like a pioneer. My heart felt so big and so ready to do it again.

I love this city. I want to make it home again.

Helping unpack her things

Travellog: Illinois to Ohio

bridge. hashtag dirty windshild

On the way back to our hotel after spending a wonderfully simple afternoon in Nauvoo things got a little less simple. We were winding along the banks of the Mississippi when the "Check Engine" light flicked on.

Perfect.

Over 1000 miles from home.

We called the nearest dealership when we got settled back at our hotel and made an appointment to take the car in first thing the next morning. We waited while they did the diagnostic test. I read Architectural Digest with Ada sleeping on my lap until enough clanky doors and sounds of strange shoes clacking past woke her up. Then all of our energy was spent entertaining her at the lego table when all she really wanted to do was steal other patrons' iPads.

The test came back a little over an hour later. It wasn't anything serious and we were on our way shortly after that. As it turns out, 300 miles down the road and a fresh tank of gas later, light turned off.

By the time we hit Illinois things were sailing along. I got to live out a life long dream of listening to  Come On Feel the Illinoise! while driving through the state. As a bonus, Sufjan's soft beat kept Ada sleeping for her longest nap on the trip. We must have listened to half a dozen albums all the way through.

We passed lots of trains and lots and lots of fields. A corn field higher than the fence posts was still a rarity, but the fields were every bit as expansive and vast as I had imagined. Every time I saw a train I thought about talking to Mike's grandma about her experience driving cross country. One of the trips she was pregnant and had a small child so she flew while her husband drove the car. She told him to be safe. He promised he would, though he admitted later that he caught himself several times racing the trains as they sped past.

There were parts on the drive where the countryside truly rolled. It wasn't punctuated with formations or marred with rocks. Just smooth. Just spreading out on either side of us like carpet.

We hurried to Ohio where we spent the evening with friends. We ate sushi and udon at a nearby Japanese place. Ada was a huge fan of soy sauce and it made me realize she had never tasted it before. Oh to be 1 again and be constantly thrilled by new tastes and sounds and sights.

After putting the babes to bed, we sat upstairs while Mike and his buddy relived hilarious annecdotes from high school and college and the four of us downed a few pints of Jeni's ice cream before heading to bed. Our last night on felt at once sad and exciting. I loved road-tripping. It was such a unique experience. Plus, I got to hold Mike's hand for hours on end.

Travellog: Nebraska to Illinois

 8/24/12
We both love looking out over the corn fields. Neither of us are tired of them yet. Though it is strange: just where are the mountains?

Windmills towered over dry crops; corn fields so stunted not even my Ada could get lost in them. But even with so many in yellow and green ombres I feel a sense of American pride at our resilience and faith; there's a sense in the air here that we're going to keep on keeping on. 

Middle-America is surprising in how unsurprising it is. It is exactly as I've always pictured it—red barns and shiny silos, green and yellow fields and tractors, long rows of sprinklers attached to those giant wheels, trucks, blue skies, hay. It seems wholesome. It seems like exactly what it is: the core of my country.

I had never traveled through the middle section of America. I didn't know how beautiful Iowa was. Or how water towers stand over every town. I told Mike that coming up on a city in the Midwest is so different from coming up on a city out West. Where I'm from, you know you're nearing a city when you start to climb a hill. Once you summit you usually see a town or two nestled in the valley between the mountain you just came over and the one in the distance that you have to drive up next.

Out there they just seemed to appear out of now where. The only indicator was the water tower, bearing the town's name.

Main Street. Keokuk, IO, USA

Keokuk Water Plant on the Mississippi River

We stayed the night in Keokuk, Iowa. Before calling it a night, we drove down Main Street, across the Mississippi and up the banks a few miles and visited Nauvoo. It was off season. The pageants had all ended just over a week before.

We had the whole place to ourselves.

Missionaries and tour guides still stood eager to lead tours through the various historic buildings, but the streets were empty. We decided to pull the bikes off the back of the car and ride through the streets. It was the best decision we made. Ada sat up front, proudly patting her shiny helmet and feeling the wind race past her. It felt so good to be moving and actually feeling the elements brush past, dust and all. I thought numerous times that day just how strange travel is. You don't feel any of the places you rush past. And yet, for those living there, they feel it so much sometimes it's painful.

Two days in the car must have made her feel like she had some serious reconnecting to do with nature because I'm fairly certain that her favorite part of the day came when she was sifting through wood-chips at the abandoned "Pioneer Past Times" post and rubbing her dusty hands on her sweaty face. Mike and I sat there and watched her, cementing the outing in our brains so when things are wild we can remember that breeze, that simplicity, that little baby who just needs a pile of dirt and two loving parents.

Naming colors on the rug.

"The sun went down beyond the river. . ." though the sky wasn't wild, nor red. But the river was brimming with lily pads and water birds and I wished we had more time (and a less worn-out little one) so we could get up to the water's edge for a few minutes.

Travellog: Utah to Nebraska

** We made it safely, gratefully and happily. We're cheery and getting settled in. Mikey starts his program next week and until then, we're filling our days buying, assembling, acquiring, doing a bit of exploring and making friends.**

Snippets from the road:

8/23/12
We started our trip headed north through Provo Canyon, wedged between semis and construction cones. The sunrise came just after 6:00 am.  The first bluish light turned warm. It wasn't particularly noteworthy or beautiful except for the way it reflected in the puddles in the median.

We drove through fog in the Wyoming mountains before in burned away, leaving just the dry, rocky Mars-like landscape of the eastern part of the state. The one striking feature: the big sky.

Ada didn't sleep much and has proved to be much more of a reader than a movie-watcher. As we entered Nebraska we saw dry streams, rocky fields, miles of fences.  We neighed at the horses and mooed at the cows and sang songs about spiders and lambs and wheels.

We'll slept in Nebraska  tonight after filling up at a local Mexican joint in Kearney.

We made arrangements to eat breakfast early, just after 5, so we can get a few hours of driving before Ada wakes up for the day.

Like a grandfather clock

I've never considered myself one of those pendulum-people who are constantly swinging between immense joy and immense trepidation and fear, but seeing as this post follows the previous one, you (and I) might reconsider.

Packing is in full swing. I've boxed up what kitchen supplies I can fit, stuffed all of our linens and towels into a bag, begun the tedious (but often freeing) process of sorting through clothes and trying to predict what things we can do without. When I'm being completely honest I know I can do with so much less. But the thought of all of these things spending another year in a basement while I rotate between the same 10 shirts makes me sad. And I hate that I'm sad about it.

I realized how much we could do without when we lived in Italy. The simplicity was refreshing. Six suitcases. That's it. If it didn't fit, it couldn't come. We didn't need it. And we truly didn't. I found as so many often do that so many of our "needs" are fabricated.

But it's easy to fall back into "needing" things again, into comparing, and wanting, and opening a box you haven't opened in years and realizing that you do have pretty dishes and things that you'd love to haul along. But there just isn't room for pretty apothecary jars when more important things like irons and towels and pots take precedence. So I'm learning again: you don't need it.

I fell into pieces last night thinking about this (and other things). As it always goes, a string of events brought me to a puddle in my husband's arms (I'm so grateful for those arms) but there I was, mad at myself for wanting things, sad that I couldn't take it all with me, frustrated by the constraints of packing, fearing making new friends, overwhelmed by the thought of driving across the country, completely exhausted by my day.

This morning I woke to a kiss and the words, "It will all work out, honey."

Things are looking more rosy already. See? Pendulum.

Bursting at the seams

We drove past sunflowers were bursting out of the median, setting off the bright lines painted on the road. The crunchy yellow grass spread out in both directions, truncated by mountains turned purple by the atmosphere. Minutes down the road, fuzzy rounds of sage brush densely dotted the landscape, the soft green sweeping back and forth across the valley.

Mike and I both agreed, we love the green desert. We agreed on another thing too: we're getting so excited for our road trip. There is so much world to see.