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Here I am.
Where is that?
I don’t know. But I am here.
In the backyard where I grew up, though it looks different now. Gardens full of strawberries, bees, and colored lights. Wind chimes that sound like a memory I never quite understood.
A whisper of okay-ness, blown into a Wednesday morning as I stare down uncertainty.
Did I make the wrong decision?
How will I fit everything in my car? Will my tires blow out in the desert? I can’t wait to see Joshua trees! Will my dog be okay?
Ten days of intensive. Maybe, strangely, a reprieve from the constant planning of my ever-swirling mind.
Will my couch make it to Boulder in time? Should I have chosen Boulder? Did I decide too soon? Where will my practicum be? Can I continue to travel? How will I make money?
Is my dog okay?
Did I make the right decision?
I can’t wait to drive. I made a playlist called “Crossing Over.”
Over what?
I don’t know.
Not knowing feels more certain than knowing.
West Texas nothingness merging into orange plateaus, rusty canyons, colonies of cacti, transforming into mountain pines and then the desert…
Mystery unfolded into earth.
How I love the desert.
But maybe not this time of year.
And the Pacific Ocean.
I have missed you.
I want to settle down.
I am terrified to settle.
Is my dog okay?
Did I make the right choice?
Who will watch him in November?
This mind on repeat like a pinball machine, addicted to the thrill of bouncing, pinging, ricocheting.
Should I have pulled harder?
Stopped playing?
Put more quarters in?
And then I look at the pink crepe myrtles in my mother’s garden.
They weren’t here when I was growing up.
Now they mix shade and beauty that falls like colored snow.
There are signs of grandkids everywhere. A rainbow ladder hanging from a tree that I bought for my niece. We’ve climbed it together many times now.
I used to love climbing trees.
Life moves on and on and on.
What is true?
It is still hot.
Climate crisis is here.
Old structures are crumbling.
Tomorrow will be Thursday.
Is time even real?
My dog is panting. In this moment, he is okay. Sleeping beside me. I can see the rhythm of his breath.
Now he is off to chase lizards.
Tomorrow we will drive.
Toward Southern California. Then Boulder. Then Turkey. Then Kenya.
I hope to settle after that.
But there is Thailand and Sundance and so many more maybes.
And none of those maybes are happening right now.
Right now there is the sound of running water.
There are wind chimes.
There are bees and strawberries and pink crepe myrtles.
And mosquitoes I wish were not here.
I have been traveling for a while now. Living on the road—out of suitcases. Upstate New York to Washington D.C. to Greece to West Virginia to Texas to Boulder to Guatemala. Now Southern California, back to Boulder, then Turkey, then Kenya.
It sounds romantic.
And sometimes it is.
I am grateful.
But somewhere in all this planning, I keep forgetting…
The planning was never real.
The living is.
The characters. The relationships. The conversations I never expected to have. The people I didn’t know I would fall in love with. The crying laughter. The laughter crying. The grief. My heart broken open. The oceans and mountains and long drives alone that never feel lonely.
Poet David Whyte says, “What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep.”
Maybe that is what I am trying to remember.
It’s funny…the control I think I have.
Choosing can narrow down freedom, and yet freedom can never be contained by choice.
I want to know I got it right.
But I don’t think life is something we get right.
It was born to live.
May it be so.
~
author: Angela Meyer
Image: Author's own
Editor: Nicole Cameron
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