Sometimes, life just wants you to know you are on the right path. I had an “Official Song of Moving,” too. And for some inexplicable reason it was Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I don’t know why, but this had become an earworm for me as I spent all of my recent days packing up the house. And when I fired up the U-Haul to make our penultimate trip out to the storage unit, it was playing on the radio. I don’t mean it came on sometime during the drive or I was flipping channels or anything: literally I started the engine, the station was already pre-tuned, and the song was not more than 30 seconds in. How’s that for a coincidence?
Maybe it was referring to the Lady Pilot [official job title] who flew us to Newark on Tiny Plane today. Again, for reasons neither my feminist wife nor I can explain, that seemed significant in our journey as, of course, you don’t see that a lot. [NOTE TO SELF: look up statistic on what percentage of commercial airline pilots are female]
But really, there were just so many signs this week, it seems beyond the point of coincidence for me. As human beings, we do tend to look for significance and meaning in all of our experiences, but even being the spiritual skeptic that I am, I have to admit something like crossing paths with Andrew Rannels on the tiny plane is something out of the ordinary. As is something as mundane as getting a bigger rental car than you reserved for your trip to the airport and finding out at the last minute that those five bags (plus carry-ons) you just fit your life into for the next year would never have fit into the compact size you originally reserved.
Not to mention all the friendly and helpful people at the Omaha airport who aided us on our journey today. You would expect sarcasm there, but honestly I mean every word. That is not a compliment I would hand out lightly or easily, but yet again… so many things could have gone wrong just in that span alone and yet Avis, United, AND the TSA all truly helped us achieve our dream today.
I mean, seriously… even I have a little of the Worrier in me at times, and pretty much everything so far has gone according to plan. I have gone over the “did we pack it, or did we store it?” question hundreds of times over the past few days, and in nearly every case, the decision was made correctly. It amazes me that we can make really good decisions under stress, too.
There is an odd sense of satisfaction after working this hard to see all of these little things come together. It’s a lot like perfectly tetrissing every single item in your storage unit and still ending up with tons of space to spare. I’ll admit what little sleep I did get last night was aided by the comfort this brought my INTJ mind… and maybe a little wine, too.
I cannot stress what a comfort this was in a week of so many goodbyes. We are moving from a house that I have lived at since I was born. The family homestead is a tough thing to get unattached to, but we had to convince ourselves it was time to move on as better things await us around the bend.
Some family and friends will come visit us for sure, but others we understand cannot make it and it is difficult knowing we are not going to see them for such a long time. It is most saddening of all to include our dogs in this, and for one dog that meant saying goodbye forever. We will forever come back to whether we handled this incredibly difficult decision fairly and whether our tradeoff was fair; in truth, there is no single “correct” answer.
“Buddy” will be forever in our hearts, and “Latte” is living it up with Grandma for the next year – again, a decision made in deference to our likely future travel schedule, and based on fairness to the well-being of a dog that barely handles short car rides without vomiting.
Experiences like this – the good and the bad, the frustration and the joy, the sleep deprivation, the stress, the pure adrenaline rush – show us the limits of human achievement. We have been working incredibly hard for this experience the past days, weeks, and months. We looked at each other when we finally made it on the plane today, knowing that our journey had officially begun and all of this was worth it.