Coming Home – Julie’s Family
Coming home was harder than I thought it would be. While I was focused on the motion of reentry, I failed to consider the emotion of reentry. Something I loved so much had ended. I grieved. Johnny and Charlie defaulted back to normal as their flow state became soccer, fifth grade, trumpet lessons, friends, work, and staff meetings. My job went away while I was gone, which I knew was a possibility. Before I resigned, I had asked my employer for a leave of absence, to “save my job” for the year. They declined, so thirteen months later, I was unemployed. Adding injury to inertia, I came home with a broken elbow and was in a fixed brace for three months. I couldn’t lift boxes, brush my teeth with my dominant hand, or sleep. I don’t need to spoon-feed the metaphor. I was immobilized.
It took me three weeks to muster the mustard to write a final blog post on juliafreedom: Travels with Charlie (and Johnny and Max) because I didn’t want our trip to end. I felt like I should have been able to wrap it all up with a pretty bow, share a few lessons learned, and embrace home sweet home. But I couldn’t wrap up the most amazing year of my life. Not with a bow, duct tape, a bungee cord, or words.
We looked and felt like travelers when we came home. I wore the same ratty jeans with holes in the knees and frays on the seams. I clipped key chains onto my belt loop, noticed each moon phase and sunrise, and called every vehicle a “rig.” We were all shocked by the number of forks in our fork drawer and the volume of shelves in the pantry.
And yet, while difficult, returning was not bitter. It was sweet. We eased back in, spending two nights as guests in a cottage at Chautauqua, a regional park nestled at the base of the Flatirons, on the western edge of Boulder. Charlie’s mother joined us for a summer wind-down in our beautiful hometown. We sat, talked, and came back to ourselves. The actual drive into our neighborhood wasn’t planned; we just pulled over at a friend’s house and turned off the engine. Johnny bounced on the trampoline and mowed their lawn. These friends and family were our cushion that made for a soft landing. Slowly we reconnected with others over a meal or a walk or at our old stomping grounds—Ideal Market, Vic’s coffee shop, Moe’s Broadway Bagel. After a couple of months, close friends hosted a gathering where we had the honor of sharing our slideshow with our community.
There had been a series of uncanny, undeniable signs that it was time to come home. My wallet, lost the week before we left for the trip, turned up at a local Boulder bank thirteen months later. Charlie’s phone, lost midtrip, was mailed back to his office. We tearfully and effortlessly sold the RV on Craigslist, leased a hybrid electric vehicle, and rejoiced in the juiciness of local Palisade peaches.
We were often asked, “So, where was your favorite place?” My answer: anywhere in Alaska; Fern Canyon in Redwood State Park; Canaan Valley, West Virginia; hundreds of magnificent places over thousands of miles; and not one day the same as any other. My favorite places, though, were not the destinations; they were the long stretches in between destinations, the unplanned space where we were simply travelers. And every day still, even after being home for a few years, we are enriched by the year of wonder, the memories and lessons, the colorful perspectives, complex relationships to home, and a familial closeness that will never, ever unravel. I would do it all over again and again. And again. It was the best year of my life.
