(Fields in Floyd, VA. Courtesy of the author, 2022. )
How I envied people who lived their whole lives in one place. I still do, a little, though I understand the realities of modern life now require moving around a little bit. But I used to point at my cousins, who spent 20 years in the same house, or L’s family, who has been three generations in the same town. Until our generation, of course.
Medical training forces us to move to where the jobs are. Perhaps it's the lucky (or stalwart) few who insist on staying in their hometown for medical school, training, and their careers. Perhaps it's by design, that location outweighs ambition for them.
We packed till the wee hours of Monday morning, or at least L did. I gave up around midnight. The movers came on Monday and took all our stuff, leaving behind still too many bags, our cats, and our plants. We slept on an air mattress for three nights, an air mattress that we walked out and bought from Target as soon as we realized our old one had a hole in it. We stayed so we could have the carpets cleaned and the windows cleaned, and we did small repairs around the house. On Thursday, as the painters came, we loaded everything into our Prius. It was about an hour’s worth of jigsaw puzzling to pile everything into the trunk, with room for two trays of plants and the cat crate. By about 11 am, a little behind schedule, we drove south, taking turns going inside at the rest areas so the cats would never be in the car without air conditioning. It was 90 degrees; the cats cried until they gave up and fell asleep. We ate more Wendy’s than I have eaten in the last twenty years, going through drive-thrus and not stopping when we saw signs for attractions like wineries and caverns. On the first day, we took turns driving and we took turns crying– I cried first, as we drove out of New York City via the Holland Tunnel, leaving behind the familiar graffiti, the people with their coffees in Soho, the restaurant wholesale stores with their signs in Chinese. Then, once we reached the highway, L cried, wondering what we were doing, leaving everything we had built behind, hauling our entire lives to a new town, a new state. By the time we reached Roanoke, VA, nine hours later, we had hit six states (NY, NJ, PA, MD, WV, VA) and we drove in the pitch black, up a dark hill to our Airbnb. It was a small converted caboose in the middle of a farm and we ate our Wendy’s, let the cats use the litter box, and stared up at the stars through the high cabin windows.
On the second day, we had mini egg souffles that the proprietors had left in the fridge. We still had nine hours to go, including stops. We took a back road that led us to the nearest gas station, one with an analog meter and no credit card slot. The other people there were farmers with their slouchy jeans, trucker caps, and big old trucks. They bought gas and feed and apparently there was hot food in the back of the store. On the second day, we took turns driving and crying some more. We ran into weather and traffic outside of Atlanta, an anticipated slowdown but frustrating nonetheless. We thought the drivers were polite in Virginia, passable in North Carolina, but downright aggressive in South Carolina. We crossed the border of Georgia, our ninth state, and cheered. Another hour to go until the city. I counted license plates from almost all of the eastern and southeastern states, except for Vermont and New Hampshire. The cats meowed when we hit a pothole but otherwise stayed quiet and resigned to their fate. We got to our Airbnb where we were to stay for two weeks until our rental house was available. We were so tired the first night; we ordered bad Thai and fell asleep on the bed, despite the strange town, the strange smells, and the strange exploding noises outside. The following morning, we discovered that the washer didn’t work, that the back door didn’t lock, and that the place was kind of dirty, despite having new Smeg appliances and a newly renovated bathroom. In the daylight, we noticed the weird decor– thrift store papier-mache masks adorned the walls, mismatched trim on all the doors, electrical outlets missing faceplates, and the mildewy smell that had not gone away despite a night of having the air purifier on. We’ve stayed in a lot of Airbnbs and this was the worst by far. It takes a lot for us to complain but we needed out of this place, so while I contacted the host and Airbnb, L looked online for a place that was available at the last minute on a holiday weekend. We finally found something but it wouldn’t be available for another day. So the second night, we shoved a dresser against the back door before we went to sleep. As we sat in the living room, my cat came running up to us with something dark in his mouth. What is it? What is it? I shouted. It was a cockroach. We made him drop it and watched as the bug skittered towards the back wall. The following morning, as we sat on the futon (there was no couch), a roach fell on L’s foot from the ceiling. We packed our car and got out of there.
We escaped that suburban murder cabin and moved to a furnished apartment in midtown. It was not lost on either of us that we lasted in the burbs for 1.5 days before we fled for a clean, updated apartment with modern decor, a building with amenities like a gated garage and a gym, and the small touches, like having paper towels and a coffee maker with coffee filters. The elevator was broken and we didn’t discover the other elevator until the next day so we hauled our bags up six flights of stairs. The first night, we let the cats out, showered, and passed out, despite the noise from the I-85 directly outside. To us city folk, the traffic was like white noise.
At this point, I’ve followed L to Michigan, she’s followed me to New York, and I’m following her to Georgia. We are so good at getting up and going that I like to remind ourselves, “It’s just another adventure.” Everything will be okay. When I map it out, MI to NY is 722 miles, NY to GA is 875 miles, and GA to MI is 824 miles. So driving to Atlanta, GA is further than Michigan. And it strangely kind of triangulates into almost a perfect triangle, but not quite, so we’ll call it an isosceles triangle. It also seems to be all the Delta hubs. Did they plan it that way?
On the 4th of July, we bought some food and went to our friends’ house for the promise of fireworks viewable from their parking lot. They are old friends from college and it was surprisingly easy, to make dinner and conversation. 9 pm rolled around, though, and the skies opened up, releasing a deluge. The radar said it would last three hours. Guessing that there would be no fireworks, L and I said our goodbyes and ran to the car, getting soaked in the five steps it took to get there. She drove us home safely, despite the rain coming down so hard and fast that the roads flooded because the drainage couldn’t keep up. About an hour later, the rains eased and we heard the fireworks mixed in with lightning. We looked out the window and there were fireworks coming from both sides, the Braves stadium and then Centennial Park downtown. That was our first 4th in Atlanta.
The point of all this (and I had forgotten my point until now) was that the older I get, the more I realize that we go through these seasons of major upheaval, and most of the time, we find ourselves okay on the other side. Perhaps that is the wisdom that comes with age. Perhaps. But even as we decided to uproot our lives, both quit our well-paying jobs on the way to stellar careers, left the city of our dreams, and had to deal with family and health issues, besides. I thought, We have been through this before. We will get to the other side. It’s a few months of upheaval, sometimes a year. But we get through it. After college, we moved to Michigan, and after medical school, I sat on the couch for a month crying because we were about to move back to New York. My therapist called it adjustment disorder. At the end of residency, I spent two weeks pouting about having to drive to Long Island for fellowship. I lived out of my car and I swore I would never do it again. During COVID, we sat on the couch for months because we thought we were all going to die. But we get through it. Wisdom is knowing that you will get to the other side.
Days after settling into this temporary apartment, I am dancing around the kitchen and singing, and cooking. I love to cook. I refuse to buy too many groceries because I don’t want to haul it all to the other place, but it’s amazing what I can do with a carton of eggs, butter, cheese, and bread. Toad in the hole, scrambled eggs, grilled cheese. As a little luxury, we permitted ourselves an avocado, a tomato, and a rotisserie chicken. We had CABT sandwiches. Last night I added broccoli and made fried rice. It’s amazing sometimes how little we need to survive and be happy. It’s amazing how fast we let go of our negative experiences. That’s the human spirit, I think. The strength to hope and move forward.
(Analog gas pump. Courtesy of the author, 2022)
I’ve been writing, too. I can’t decide whether I should use this (Substack) as my main platform or go back to Wordpress. I have a backlog of stories I will publish over the next month or so. I have been so grateful, just in the past two days, for the space and time to write. One of my COVID stories has been accepted into an anthology, hopefully to be published in fall 2022 or spring 2023.
In case you are interested, one of my poems was published in a chapbook collection. It’s not one of my best poems, but it’s not one of my worst, either. They took it, though, so okay! Here is the link to purchase the chapbook, or if you would like an autographed copy from me, let me know. I don’t have any physical copies yet.
Watch this space for more stories.
Until next time, always go black tie!