sometimes, you can go home again
03/31/2019
For me, I did just that, when moving back into Knight. I have to admit, I was nervous to move back in. Excited. And nervous. I so missed living in my cozy home. I missed the warmth of my surroundings. I missed the simplicity of my small space. I missed being able to see out from every direction. And I missed being able to pack it all up in a short time and move on to different views in a new place. But I was nervous all the same. The last time I’d been in the RV was for the mad sprint back to Illinois to get out of the Oregon rain, when I was consequently slammed into a brutal winter with frigid, deadly temperatures and winds. In Oregon, Knight had become inhospitable because of the moldy environment the rain had created. I hoped that the steps I had taken had been enough to make Knight the friendly, welcoming home I’d known prior to being overtaken in Secret Camp. But I had no real way of knowing until moving back in. And it’s spring. The rainy season. I had an additional anxiety over moving the cats back in. Would they still love being in the rig? Or would they feel confined after having a bigger space to live in than they’d ever had before (other than when they each had experienced living life entirely outside as stray, abandoned, or feral cats in their previous lives)? And how would I. feel moving from a house back into Knight?
Winter in Illinois has been a long one. Today, it feels still present as the temps sit below freezing and the wind howls out of the north, making it feel so much colder. I used to love winter. I used to love rain. I think I still do. But right now, we sit on the cusp of April and the calendar said spring arrived a week ago. So, my four-season soul is telling me it is time. Time for flowers and green buds on trees. Time for light or no jacket temperatures. Time for the greening of the grass and the buzzing of bees. Lucky for me, the forecast says it is arriving for real this coming week. I am ready for it. I am ready for time outside and open windows. Fresh air smells and breezes blowing through the rig.
The cold and the sometimes rainy, sometimes snowy precipitation of the last two months kept me inside and hunkered down. I was unable to do the work I needed to do on Knight until the last week or so before moving back in. But because of that, I had plenty of time when I first got to my parents’ house to finish writing a book I had started writing back in the fall. My first novel, and the first in a planned trilogy. Writing this blog has been a great creative endeavor for me, and it gave me the courage to put words out there in the form of fiction. I cut my teeth on a children’s book, and then dove into a full-on novel. When I went out on the road, I had thought I would write a book, but I did not dream I would write fiction, let alone a children’s book and a YA novel. But now that I’ve done it, I’ve found how much I love to write fiction.
When I was young, I wrote creatively all the time. I wrote and I read. I used to have to be told to put my book away and be social. I carried a book with me all the time and everywhere. Any free moment I had, I’d escape into the world living in the pages of whatever book I was currently reading. When I did not have free time, I made it, eschewing conversations with family while on vacation or reading while eating, in order to find out what happened next. I was a journal writer from the age of about eight or so and I also carried around a notebook or loose scraps of paper on which to write imaginary scenes or stories that would pop into my head. No one read these things. They were purely for my own entertainment. As I got older, the creative writing stopped. When I got to grad school, the fiction reading stopped. While I got back into reading fiction after I graduated, I was completely surprised when I felt the desire to write fiction. I was also intimidated by the thought. But once the ideas for both books popped into my head, there really was no question for me as to whether or not I’d pursue them. And now they are done and it’s time to start book two in the trilogy. (Check out my “Books” tab where you will find the links to both books on Amazon.)
When we first moved ourselves into my parents’ house, the cats had a difficult time adjusting to all the space. They seemed to be disconcerted with not knowing where one another or we were. Towards the end, however, they discovered the fun in chasing the laser light around an entire floor or chasing each other up and down the stairs. Towards the end, however, I was very ready to move back into my home. I had to do several things to get him ready, and I had less than a week to get them all done because the weather didn’t cooperate before then. But, with the leak in the bathroom fixed, new faucets in the bathroom and kitchen, the switch for the porch light repaired, a new bed with airflow netting under the mattress, mold killing primer on wood, and touchup paint, we could move back in.
So, I came home again. It has been wonderful to be back in my cozy little space. The cats have been joyful, especially Gatsby and Bubs. It took Arlo and Nola about a day, and then they, too, were back into the groove and seeming happy and contented to be home. We aren’t leaving the area for a while, but we are camped for now at a nearby campground with Knight overlooking a little pond with geese and ducks already hanging out. It has rained a LOT the last few days. It felt a little like the coast of Oregon again. Except colder. But Knight seems to be holding up in the rain. And after tonight the overnight temperatures will not be dropping below freezing and the daytime highs from Tuesday onwards, at least according to the weather app, will start to climb into the upper 50s and lower 60s. The chairs and awning will come out, Gatsby will chill on my lap, and we will watch as the flowers start to pop out of the ground, the leaves begin to bud, and the grass goes from straw brown to soft green, as the birds flit about the trees and the bees wake up. Oh yeah. And we will have to have our plan for how to get the cats to the storm shelter if the sirens sound, for it is April in the Midwest…
Peace.
des
