Vignettes from the Mad Dash
Downsizing with a Twist
For three weeks after selling our house we were more like nomads than vacationers, with no fixed address, just a car full of stuff. What a long dash it was, from North Carolina to San Diego and then up the coast to Oregon. As the cycle of drive/sleep/pack/drive repeated, the days began to blur together, but some moments stand out even now.
Wichita Falls, Texas
To drive an electric car across America is possible with some planning. The closest we came to a problem was a lone charger in the middle of nowhere with a big sign taped to it:
This unit may or may not accept payment. We are aware of the situation, and we are working to resolve it with the manufacturer.Not working very hard, from the look of the faded sign. Fortunately Schrödinger’s Charger came through and we were on our merry way.
Amarillo, Texas
The hotel decor could best be described as Elegant Cowboy. Crossed six-shooters were etched into the elevator floor, stylized portraits of steers hung on the walls, and a genuine Prohibition speakeasy occupied the basement. The sky was threatening and the wind was up by the time we walked down the street for a TexMex dinner. Back in our spacious room with its cowhide chairs we watched trees sway outside the window. We slept for a little while and then the sirens started, loud and demanding as the air raid sirens of my Cold War childhood. They sounded sporadically throughout the night.
At one point I asked my partner, "Is there a tornado? Should we stand in the hall? Go to the basement?" He snored in answer.
The next morning I asked the hostess in the breakfast room what the sirens had meant. Turns out there was a tornado at the other end of town, and the hotel manager kept tabs on its location all night in case the guests needed to evacuate to the basement.
We were safe, but I didn't know it.
White Sands, New Mexico
Driving through New Mexico we could watch sand storms form and swirl in the distance. We drove past roadside signs lined up like the old Burma Shave ads:
IN A DUST STORM...PULL OFF ROADWAY...TURN VEHICLE OFF...FEET OFF BRAKES...STAY BUCKLED.Why "feet off brakes," I wondered. Is that safer if you get rear ended?
We toured a petroglyph site and my partner mentioned to the park ranger that we planned to visit White Sands. "Not today," he answered. "The winds over there are forty miles an hour. They probably wouldn't let you out of your car, and if they did, you’d feel like you were being blasted with a shotgun."
By the time we arrived at the hotel in Alamogordo the wind blew so hard I could barely open the car door. We made it across the parking lot to a lovely Italian restaurant and watched the trees beat the windows in the dirty wind.
San Diego, California
Idyllic weather, as always, in my hometown.
I visited my mother's grave, which now has a gravestone. She died at the height of the pandemic and I could only Zoom in for her memorial. I am so glad Mom was laid to rest in San Diego; I never knew anyone to love this city like she did. Her parents are in that graveyard too, just paces away.
After the memorial park, we drove to Pacific Beach and I stood in shadows under the pier, two blocks from the site of the cottage where we lived when I was a baby. I watched the wavelets sparkle in the light that flickered between the boards.
End of the Line: Oregon
We arrived in Oregon on a Sunday night. We stayed in a residence hotel in what was essentially a studio apartment with two burners and no oven. The whole place was brown: brown furniture, tan walls, brown and tan striped carpeting. What a comedown from our five bedroom home back in North Carolina. My brain started playing the "what if" game: What if we don't find a house to rent? What if we have to stay in this one boring room for a long time? What if the broken screen on our first floor unit means people try to break in?
I pulled myself up short and thought: What if this were a step up instead? What if we were truly homeless and not sitting on the proceeds of selling a house? I had to remind myself repeatedly to be grateful for all I have.
On Monday and Tuesday we looked at houses. On Wednesday we signed a lease. We are about to move into a house that's just the right size for two nerds in our seventies, with pink and purple flowers and a creek in the back yard.
***
There was never a moment in all of this travel when I actually worked on my next book, my collected essays. But as we retrieved our belongings from the overstuffed car, the manuscript began to emerge like a rock from a melting glacier. The book is so close to finished! Soon I will review the marvelous comments from readers and editors, and bring this project to conclusion. This nomadic phase will end and I'll return to the life of a writer. But I'll never forget all the moments of our travels. They shine like points of light glinting on the water below the pier.
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