Leaving Pennsylvania
I left before, 22 years ago, for Fort Benning, Georgia.
Back then, I had a girlfriend I wanted to get back to. She broke up with me shortly into my enlistment.
I’ve moved what feels like a million times. I moved from Kentucky to Alaska, with all my earthly possessions in a puny Hyundai coup. I moved from Alaska to Pennsylvania, again, all of my earthly possessions in a puny Hyundai. Both times, I did it in the dead of winter.
I moved from Pennsylvania to Texas, then California. Those drives I did in summer. I came into Utah from Colorado and saw a thunderstorm in a valley from the vantage point of the mountains. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, tracing lightning from sky to ground.
I moved from California to New York in winter. It snowed from Donner Pass all the way to the Mississippi. Salt Lake City at the time was preparing for its Olympics, and everything was blanketed in snow.
This move is a first. We hired movers. We have strategy. We’re closing on a house. The only worrisome element is that the drive takes longer than we expect, but because my wife and I are driving separate cars and hoping we get enough sleep.
There’s none of the haphazard, seat-of-your-pants, flirting with disaster to this move. Every aspect of it has been meticulously planned and coordinated. Yet the adventure is there, the thrill of something new over the horizon.
Now if Herschel, our Great Dane, would stop noisily pacing the house, I could get some damn shut eye. Glad he’s riding with Leah tomorrow. He’s a big, sweet, doofus, but heavens he’s irritating. Give me the crying toddler over the panting in my ear in the car for 10 hours.