The First Week

ten states down, eighteen to go

The morning after a goodbye party with so many Maine faces that I adore, we left before 5 a.m. and drove to my in-laws’ 100-year-old house in Rhode Island that once belonged to a silent film star.

It was a soft place for us to land.

The house has stone walls and sits a mile from the ocean. Not far away, there’s a field where Dinah can run and I can see a pond, and beyond that, the ocean.

My in-laws have three cats Dinah was DYING to befriend: Gracie, Val-jean, and Buddy. Buddy was the only one who considered a friendship ON HIS TERMS.

Buddy also took charge of the treat situation and my mother-in-law indulged him. He is a sweetie and deserved every single treat he demanded.

For three days and nights the temperature was about 1000 degrees and the humidity was a cross between Houston and Miami. On those stifling days and nights, we all watched Elf and The Boroughs and played Dominoes.

Dinah remained close by, watching for avoidant cats and for snacks that sometimes fell from the table.

Before sunrise (though it was still nightmarishly humid and hot) I took slow walks around the neighborhood on my gimpy foot and wept at the flowers and trees that I won’t see in Arizona

Extended family came and went. Mostly, I forgot to take pics, but my niece made an American flag cake and this is what it looked like right after it slipped out of my sister-in-law’s hands on the front stoop. It was tasty. And if you ask me, the flag seems about right…

On the morning of the 4^th, Todd and I drove around town, took a wrong turn, and ended up crossing the Newport Bridge, which feels like a metaphor for my life.

This morning we packed up and hugged the parents extra hard. Through tears, we pointed the car west. I-95 was wide open until Stamford, CT and the sliver of NY we crossed.

In Philly, we went to my friend Kelly’s new (to me) house, and I finally met her 15-month-old baby in person. (He let me hold him, which felt like a huge win.) I see Kelly once a year if I’m lucky. Our relationship, which is a three-way group friendship with Amy, lives primarily over texts, emails, far too infrequent Face Time calls, and even more infrequent group trips where we hole up in a rented vacation house to write and sing karaoke and talk about childhood wounds and therapy.

Seeing Kelly in Philly ended in another fucking good-bye.

After a tour of the bridges on the Schuylkill River, we spotted Rocky on the steps of the art museum and then drove past city hall.

We’re in a quiet hotel in the Maryland boonies next to fast food and a Cracker Barrel. I ordered a salad from Cracker Barrel which I’d classify as the high end of mediocre

I’m going to bed early so I can sleep instead of question all my decisions of the past eight months that led to this. That’s a fruitless exercise. Like when we got on the bridge – I have to keep going until I get to the other side. That’s where I’ll figure out how I feel about it.

xoxo

PS Dinah is THE BEST Road Tripper.

PSS

If you’re keeping track, here are the states we’ve reached so far (yes, I count Maine): Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland.