Day 10 Trailing Back Nashville, TN to Wytheville, VA

We made it to our new home state. We crossed the state line early this afternoon and are now comfortably at our last stop before home. I am trying that out. Calling 24 E. Oak St. in Alexandria home. It has possibility.

We actually haven't felt at home in almost a year. We left our home in February when we put it on the market. Since Covid hit a few weeks after we moved into our rental we never got to feel that it was a real home. We called it Covid house. Home is the place where your friends and family gather, where you know some of your neighbors, where there is familiarity in the routes you take to go to the neighborhood spots you have discovered. We had none of that. Our rental house in Santa Clara felt more like a cocoon where we waited to emerge into something more spectacular. So calling Alexandria home has possibilities because we get to live with Hilary and Nate. We have expanded our living bubble by 100% and that feels pretty special right now.

Virginia so far is beautiful but maybe it is just that it is different like all the states have been, and there is so much beauty in the natural world. I think I just appreciate the different foliage, the fact that mountains look so different in other parts of our country, that water runs through the land in disparate ways and creates such a varied landscape. I did notice, here in Southwestern Virginia, the Trump signs and a few confederate flags. I also noticed my prejudice in Tennessee when a large southern white man driving a pick up stopped to talk to Thomas while he was pumping gas. He wanted to connect over the trailer and just have a conversation. He had a sweet southern drawl and I worried over his judgments of us with California plates while I was steeped in my own biased perception of him. Lots of opportunities for self-reflection and humility ahead.

When we were an hour outside of Nashville we got a text from Hilary and Nate asking us to drive straight through and arrive a day early. "It's a beautiful day here"; "We can tuck you in when you arrive"; "We can open a bottle of wine and share it". We were tempted. Usually I can be impulsive and say yes without thinking. But two things stopped us. The first is that it just so exhausting to drive with the trailer and it would have been a very long day. But the second one, that I didn't figure out until I explored my hesitation later on, is that I want to savor this. I do not want to arrive to my new life disheveled and tired and cranky. I want to arrive giving it the chance to be a sweet, sweet experience. I am already scared enough about the unknown this new life will bring me. I want to do this slowly and relish all the extraordinary feelings that might rush in as I realize that I will now be near my family; that I took this risk and it might have moments of exquisite pay off.

Tomorrow we will arrive.