Time to Go
I announced to most of my network the upcoming move home to a small town in the mountains of Virginia. I’m returning to a homestead that has remained a part of my family for over a hundred years and moving in to my parents’ cabin on the property.
“Homestead” may be a bit misleading knowing what I do about the word’s use today. It is supposed to describe a property, in a country landscape, that is worked and exercised to produce a livelihood for its inhabitants. The homestead I return to, however, provides mostly spiritual support to the family, not monetary, and only housed chickens, once, several years ago.
The departure of our property from modern definitions of a homestead means that the opportunity lies in creating our own definition. There’s talk of chickens returning. There’s an endless list of cabin improvements. Additions to the current set of garden beds. New stairs to the deck. The list can go on.
In any case, my return is prompted by a deep and immediate need to return to the nest I left at 19 when I started college. Far from wanting to distance myself from my family, I was out looking for the adventures I was told could be mine. If I worked hard enough, followed my inspiring ideas, and contributed to whatever community I found myself in, adventure was mine for the taking. It held true throughout college as I relied on extended family to live and work in Washington, D.C. I then lept from my college commencement ceremony into a Chicago suburb to intern and eventually work for a private company. I left to travel to California for work, despite explicit directions from my mother to not move any further west than Chicago. In every stage, every year, every week, and every day of my time away from home I have found adventure.
There was the phone call in front of my best friend’s mom’s elementary school where I found out I was accepted for my first internship at a large firm in the nation’s capital. I had bought my plane ticket to D.C. weeks before without knowing of my acceptance. That same summer, I carted an 18 pack of Old Dominion root beer through the metro to make good on an invitation to a “Favorite Beer” party. Being only 19, root beer was my only purchasing option.
The next summer I had an adventure working 7 days a week for weeks on end and discovering the benefits of living without a car in a bustling city as my weight dropped and I finally experienced one of those “summer transformations” I never got in high school but Meg Cabot always wrote about. It was also the closest I’ve ever been to being able to relate to people who work 7 days a week for months on end who support whole families with their earnings and still contribute their time, energy, and love to nourish those families. I took couch naps with my precious free-time. What a luxury to have had.
My final summer, I took adventure to a new level by agreeing to live with one of my best friends and a classmate I’d met just weeks before in a studio apartment spread out among two futon beds. We grocery-shopped together, explored the area, and invited friends over for GTL (gym tan laundry).
Throughout college, I embraced the adventure that is Michigan. 10 degrees on a college formal night? No worries, I’ll wear my fur coat. It’s warmed up to 20 degrees by February? That’s sweater weather on my way to the party. I saw one of the theater department’s plays 3 times. They only do about 8 shows for each play. I managed to make and then break ties with college administration in the course of 4 years. I took a million hilariously captioned snaps. I signed up for a triathlon with my only other endurance experience parked squarely in 5K’s. I killed that triathlon and formed a six-pack for the first time in my life.
During my time in the suburbs of Chicago, one of the greatest adventures was living amongst a different demographic than I was used to. A neighbor and his wife immigrated to America separately, him first, her seven years later from a small Eastern European country. They started a family here and looked forward to sending their kids to college one day. I struck up a conversation with an older gentleman in a diner once and learned of his life journey from working as a journalist in Yugoslavia under Tito to immigrating to the U.S. to work on A/C units before settling in as a cashier at the local grocer. I happened upon a few Uber drivers hailing from what is now known as Myanmar when they were trying to return a lost wallet to the address on the driver’s license it contained. I learned they were refugees, and had found their sanctuary here in America. The people I met were constant reminders of the turmoil in this world and that even on our worst day, America stands as a destination for many many people.
I found a church home in the suburbs of Chicago. A place I can call home for the rest of my life and made me never want to leave. It was my respite on my darkest days, when dealing with the consequences of my own choices was too much and I just wanted to be around believers who would build me up and allow me to be a shoulder to lean on. I made many lifelong friends and added a new best friend to my brood who shares my love of felines and occasional confusion over life and what to do with it.
I reconnected with a high school friend who was new to the area, too, and we took on a triathlon together. I was amazed and inspired by her dedication to this new challenge and loved spending time together working toward something greater than ourselves. We even managed to survive cycling on the busy Chicago streets to see July 4th fireworks.
By the end of my adventure in Chicago, I felt pretty strongly about my desire to align my career with an industry closely related to my alma mater and degree. I also kicked myself for preparing to leave a place that held dear community partners like my mechanic who would have breakfast waiting for me when I brought in my car for maintenance.
The California adventure I was about to embark on promised a very different chapter from Chicago. Aside from being on the other side of the country, it was a new role, new city, and a place I had never physically been before. I booked an Airbnb for 10 days and on the 11th day, moved into a room I found on Craigslist. I lost my first fur baby, Toulouse, on the first day of a week-long seminar I planned and was executing as part of my role. I found my first work wife and made up part of an unstoppable womanhood that is my female co-workers. Book clubs, happy hours, picnics and more put me in a space where I felt empowered as a human, as a woman.
I lived with my best friend from Chicago for several months and showed her my new world, my new community. I hosted an intern for a bit, too, and for a time, the three of us occupied a 12x12 room, harmoniously. I traveled for work (a luxury!) and went out on Friday nights (sometimes!). I felt like a real 20-something. Then, the volunteer bug, that I’m pretty sure is a microchip my mother implanted in my brain, went off and I found housing activism. I spoke at city council meetings. I wrote op-eds for local news sources and was published for the first time outside of my college career. I felt connected to my community, to Oakland.
I was looking forward to a summer of hiking to the chilly waters of the Pacific just to take a dip, maybe finding a new place to live, seeing fruits of my housing activism at national conference, and more. But the call came early one Monday morning. The call to come home. The call to return to the homestead where I was needed. I answered the call and thus, it is time to go.
