I just tucked both girls into their beds—Kailyn sleeping on her tummy in the top bunk/crib and Evelyn snuggled into the platform
bed/bunk that Brent installed after removing the couch that had originally been there. It’s 11:00pm. We’ve spent the day not even leaving the campground—doing laundry, pushing each other on the merry-go-round in the playground, playing on the floor of the trailer, watching “Creative Galaxy” on Amazon. Evelyn did yoga in front of the TV. We’ve prepared breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We’ve walked the dogs. We’ve snacked and laughed. It was a much needed “ordinary day” around the house. We read books and snuggled and the baby nursed, and after the unusually routine motions of the day quieted to a dark peacefulness and all I could hear was Emmy snoring and the wall clock ticking, I stopped to reflect. It’s been a year.
It’s been far more than a year, really. July 17th last year, we moved out of our house and into the trailer. What would have ordinarily been a week-long annual trip to Doheny became a surreal emptying of the house and packing of all essentials into the trailer. Doheny would become our first home away from home. It’s been a year.
Once upon a time, we shopped fifth wheels. I was six weeks pregnant barely believing we were still going to carry through with the plan with a baby now in the changing picture of what fulltiming would be. We discovered this model—the Jayco 377RLBH—and Evelyn flitted up and down the stairs of the model parked on the lot, opening doors and crawling into closets and tubs playing hide-and-go-seek. She exclaimed she liked this one the best because it had the best hiding places. I had a flicker of a vision in my head of what it might look like tucking a baby into bed in the top bunk (or bottom—that plan was still barely one of many options at the time), and I decorated the girls’ room in my mind’s eye in an attempt to make a rolling home a real home somehow in image.
When we hatched this plan, it felt surreal and impossible. It was scary and unsure. It felt as much like we were running from something as we were trying to convince ourselves this was an exciting venture.
We are more than a year into this thing and it’s only just starting to feel normal!
We’ve spent the last year in a tight tether to home, though. What we thought would be a one year adventure around the country was complicated by the illness of Brent’s dad. A heart attack after Christmas kept us anchored to home for three months when we had returned from a loop around the Midwest thinking we would come home for Christmas and head out again. We stayed in campgrounds close to where home once was, so close yet so far from realizing our dream and moving our family on toward the promise of greener pastures.
We branched out again and again only to return home as his condition worsened.
Whatever “normal” was in our minds, we were far from achieving it the way we were living.
Without getting into the details of the darker moments and months in the past year, I had a moment tonight. In that moment, the house embraced me. I realized how comfortable and familiar this small living room is and how those dreams I’ve had every now and then of moving in with the new owners of our Rancho Cucamonga home as if it was still ours and we had every right to it had gone away at some point. This is home. Wherever it is parked, it’s home.
This life isn’t easy. It’s not normal. Some might find it crazy to think that doing laundry in a campground laundromat and chatting with the other campground residents is a welcome luxury (it’s almost like having my own machines again!). Some might find it crazy that I love not knowing where the nearest grocery store is or that I look forward to shopping small stores and living like a local. Some might find it crazy that our dogs are so used to this life that they barely glance at other dogs passing by when we’re sitting under our awning or that we regularly leave them in the car with the air running if needed so we can run errands. Some might find it crazy that we have had probably about a dozen campfires in a year or that we hardly ever let our awnings out unless it’s to block the sun. It is kind of crazy.
This entire year has been an adjustment. What we thought would be a one-year adventure is stretching farther out into an unknown timeline. We’ve seen so much at this one-year mark, and we’ve seen nothing! We itch for more space sometimes and we have so many pet peeves with each other we could rent out a kennel, but the routine and program of moving so much and living a real life at the same time is only just settling in after a year.
At the moment, home is parked in Kalama, Washington, and we’re so close to the I-5 we have to repeat what we’ve just said a few times to be sure we’ve heard each other. But we’ve also met some friendly fellow campers/tenants, from vacationers to pipeline workers staying long-term and we’ve swum in the Kalama River that runs through the park and we’ve celebrated the life of Brent’s aunt whom he was fortunate enough to visit with before her passing… all because we were here.
The girls are sleeping in the room I once only daydreamed of tucking them into, and the dogs are snoring in front of the fireplace. Our tether to California is through love of family and friends; it’s finally certain that it’s not really “home” in the sense that it’s where we feel we should still be living our daily lives.
What does that mean? It means we’ll be doing this a lot longer. It means I have a lot less vision of a larger home we’ll settle into someday again and more of a longing for the next city, the next community, the next group of people we get to meet. Home is where you roam. I’m beyond fortunate to truly feel and know that home is right here and that my family is along for the journey.
Without my anchor, though, none of it would be what it is. My husband, my best friend, my daughters' playmate and provider, my partner in this madness... he makes unusual doable and stressful memorable. He navigates, he plans, he fills, he cleans, and he flushes. He hitches, he tows, he plants. He shrugs when I tense and he smiles when I frown. He is the backbone of this crazy operation. We thought he'd live The Dream after quitting his job to do this, a permanent camping vacation. It turns out, his hands are full all the time. His is a full time job: daddy, day care, shopper, driver, dog walker, house keeper, plumber, electrician, public relations... the list goes on and on. This lifestyle is far from maintenance free, and this is my partner in the chaos.
So here is it. One year down and counting. The odometer isn't ready for rest, yet. We have countless miles ahead of us.
