One Week

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND – Has it only been a week? It seems like we’ve been here much longer.

I’m sitting alone in our living room. Drinking a glass a wine. We have a fireplace, but I can’t see it because of the boxes. I’m not crying, but the truth is a feel pretty damned depressed.

I don’t really feel much like writing, but Marley said it might be therapeutic.

Overall, we’re doing pretty well I suppose. We arrived late on Friday night, worn out but none the worse for wear. Marley and I had our first fight of the trip trying to find the ferry docks after being welcomed into Seattle with hellish rush-hours traffic. It was a long day of driving, with emotional – and physical – highs and lows as we made our way over the Snohomish Pass and down into the Puget Sound.

Finally though the traffic, we were coming to what we figured was the last 40 minutes of our trip and the most, well, epic-like – loading our car aboard the Seattle-to-Bainbridge Ferry where we would stand on the bow of the great ship and pose with windswept hair as Indiana Jones…um, make that Ohio Andersons…soundtrack music played in the background.

Instead, things were falling apart. The fight was stupid. I was just being oversensitive and bitchy. And tired. But you could hardly call it a fight. We’re much better at fighting these days. It was over as soon as it started really, but it was a crappy way to enter into the folds of our new home. We regrouped quickly, though, and made our peace. Which was good because the next three hours would have really sucked otherwise.

The ferry we had hoped to get on had left just a few minutes before we arrived, which meant we’d have to wait another hour before we could make the final leg of our journey. Except, as it turned out, we would wait that hour only to drive through the ferry-boarding queue and get stopped one car shy of making the next ferry. That is to say, the second car in front of us was the last one to make it on, making us second in line now for the next ferry. One last try as saying this simply: we were going to have wait yet another hour.

Which was fine. The kids took it stride. Noah and I went and looked at the fireboat docked nearby. A massive containership plowed by on its way out of the seaport off to ports unknown, riding high with thousands of steel boxes stacked like so many blocks of multicolored Legos. Except in the process the warm wonderful sunny day gave way to heavy clouds and wind and cold. By the time we got on board the ferry it was down right blustery.

We made our way topside, from the belly of the boat, where the cars and trucks are corralled in long lines, up onto the passenger decks where commuters sit and mingle or huddle over laptops or read or doze listening to Ipods. Outside a few people were braving the cold winds feeding a flock of seagulls that were sailing along side us, swooping and diving in for the tossed morsels.

We were soon among them. And in the process we managed to get this picture taken – a record of the end of our long trip and the beginning of our new adventure here in Seattle.

By the time we made it to our house the light was dwindling, but the kids were still wildly enthusiastic to explore their new home. I had hoped for an early afternoon arrival where we would have plenty of time to get settled for our first night, but instead we unpacked the bear necessities and drove into town to find something to eat. By the time we made it back and crawled into bed it was well past 11pm. It wasn’t the kind of “home coming” I had hoped for, but it was good to finally be here.

Like that last day of traveling, the week since has had its ups and downs. We’ve been slowly getting unpacked and settled. Chris and Shannon came to visit on Saturday, bringing food and flowers and beer. We couldn’t have hoped for a better welcome wagon.

But aside from the one of the boys who live down the road, we’ve yet to meet any of our neighbors. Indeed, it has felt remarkably lonely. Our “tree house” as we call it, nestled in among the 100-foot evergreens completely masking what neighbors we do have, only heightens that sense of alone-ness.

The house itself – while very “us” in that it’s funky and rustic and eclectic and bit rough around the edges – doesn’t get much sun, even when its sunny, surrounded as it is by aforementioned tall trees.

I find myself missing our house. The way the sunlight pours into our bedroom in the morning and cascades into the living room during the day. As I unpack, I find myself missing our kitchen and all the storage. I miss our dishwasher, because the one here sucks. I miss the attic and the shed and all the other places for the all the crap I don’t know what do with yet. I miss "my spot" up on the breakfast bar where so many wonderful conversations have been had.

I miss the hourly bells of the big church down the road and the seemly random songs they play at seemly random points throughout the day. I miss the general store-like market and gas station where I can be there and back again – with a bottle of half-and-half first thing in the morning or steaming hot pizza at night or whatever else in between – in less than five minutes flat. I miss the little red brick K-12 schoolhouse next door. I miss the open farm roads and the new corn and soy bean crops that are just now, I can picture clearly, transforming the brown Ohio landscape into wide seas of green.

More than anything, though, I just miss our neighbors – our friends and our family. I miss the herd of kids that were constantly running through our house and building forts out back and riding bikes out front and creating wonderful chaos everywhere. God, I miss the kids. And their parents. And our kids’ grandparents. And aunts. And…everyone.

Great, now I’m crying again.

I just didn’t think it was going to be this hard. And as I reread what I just wrote I know I sound like an unthankful schmuck, because it’s true I have so much to be thankful for here and dishwashers and attics don’t matter at all. And I love tall trees. I guess all I’m saying is that it feels like this is the part where we should be totally enthralled with all the new coolness of everything we’re doing, and to be sure there has been some of that, a lot of that really, but a lot of the time I just find myself being stuck in the sadness.

Marley wrote as much to one of our friends back in Ohio today. Even as I write these words, Diana’s response drops into our inbox, her words both understanding and a breath of hope…

I imagine the loneliness and isolation are at the unbearable stage at this point. It will take some time, but you will ease into a new routine…

…and (without getting into the details) they make me laugh, just when I needed a boost. And so it has been with this blog -- comforting and encouraging while also a certain amount of sharing of a heavy load. Thank you all for coming on this journey with us and for your many comments, calls and emails along the way. You will never know how much they’ve meant to us.

I’m not sure what happens from here, as far as the blog goes. I have found that when we are traveling there is a natural rhythm that emerges, not unlike when I was a reporter on the road, that makes writing very easy. That rhythm is harder to hold onto when “real life” settles in.

Be that as it may, I’d like to try and keep at this. As usual, Marley’s right: if nothing else, it is cathartic for me. “There and back again” has so many more possibilities as a title than what I first imagined. The truth is, I’m not sure where “there” is anymore – that is, where we’re going, exactly.

But wherever “there” ends up, I’d like to keep bringing it back here to share with you, the people who matter most to us.