Launching the Pilgrimage

And just like that, we did it. Something that we set into motion 10 months ago, worked on and fretted over for 10 long months, just passed right in front of our eyes.

August was a blur. We moved Gen into college, spent the weekend crying when pulling into the local Walmart parking lot where she would hang out with her friends, agonizing over her roommates, flinching at every little white car we would pass on the street, reacting out of instinct that it might be her.

The next week for me at work was off the charts, which made the silence easier to endure. Chris spent the week adjusting to the fact that he wasn’t going to have to go back to work for a long, long time. And we turned our eyes to the weekend, the first “divvy day” with the girls and their husbands.

Saturday dawned hot and ridiculously humid. I think the temperature and the humidity level were on equal footing, both topping the 90s. Stupid hot. The girls showed up early Saturday morning, and Season even brought her cousin and husband, thank goodness. By midday, we had all lost about 10 lbs in sweat, but we managed to get every piece of furniture either loaded onto a truck or trailer or carried down to the garage for Sunday’s “divvy day.” Thank goodness for 20-something year old men and women! We have the best kids. I would have collapsed if it had just been me and Chris — we would have left every stick of furniture in that house or pushed it all out the nearest window — whichever came first. After the furniture and loading down both Madison and Season’s cars with memorabilia and house stuff, then it was just black bag after black bag of trash or stuff to go to goodwill. I mean, things got brutal. To the point that we had to switch up the trash dumps that we took bags to so that we didn’t trip the trigger of too much stuff. I’ve always been a minimalist, but purging a house in late August in the South, we became absolutely ruthless. If it wasn’t coming with us or going to one of the girls, it was gone!

Monday was all about pushing smaller and smaller piles of stuff towards the kitchen, cleaning the rooms behind us, until Monday afternoon, the new owners arrived to a completely empty, completely clean new house for their walk through. I was stunned (and more than a little impressed) that we managed to do it. Pay no attention to the chubby little man behind the curtain (i.e., the hot mess of chaos that was our stuff crammed into our small camper) — we had done it!

Tuesday morning, we loaded up the last bits and prepared to pull out at Noon. I spent the last few minutes that morning walking through the house, reminiscing, and thanking the house for a wonderful two years. I wasn’t sad at leaving; I was so incredibly grateful to have had two years in that beautiful house and that it set us up so well for the Pilgrimage. It wasn’t right to leave without saying thank you.

Fast forward to today — we are 22 days in, on our third campground. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, this was the right decision. The stress relief, the peace, the closeness of just the two of us (and the dogs, of course)…I struggle to find the words to describe the sense of peace and contentment. All I know is 22 days, 400 square feet of living space, 2 dogs who have to be walked every morning (no longer just released into the backyard to pee and eat all the dog poop they want), rainy days, hot days, and 1 marginally-crummy campground behind us…………..and we are loving every single second of it.