I had been mentally preparing for this day for a while — close to a year, first when I made the decision to leave California, and then with every step I took toward that goal: putting the condo on the market, leaving a college where I taught twelve hours a week, donating all my books to local libraries, giving everything else to neighbors, not accepting any new editing jobs, renting an apartment to live in to finish my semester once escrow closed, searching online for a new place in any other state, emailing my official notice everywhere I still worked, finding this cabin and contacting its agent, going through inspections, closing escrow, studying maps for the road trip, finding motels near the highway at the right intervals and booking rooms, taking the dogs to the vet for their vaccines so that I wouldn’t have to worry about that for a while, having my car checked for safety, saying goodbye to my students and colleagues, filling the trunk with a few boxes of basic necessities, and driving through the states while going through the entire spectrum of emotions and imagining infinite possibilities at my destination.
Finally, I was home.
