Leaving Home to Come Home- Part 1

In January of this year the cold, unrelenting winter that slammed the East Coast and a recent nostalgia drenched trip back home bought me to the conclusion that I wanted to return to my hometown, and not just for a sporadic visit. I was homesick. I missed everything about Albuquerque: the way the monolithic Sandia mountains that lined the east side of the city lit up at sunset, the vibrant and colorful diversity that painted every aspect of it, the way larkspur looked in bloom. Mostly I missed the people I had left behind when I moved to Virginia on a whim. I missed my large and wild family, my childhood friends that I had managed to remain close to , even while navigating the tricky waters of adulthood from nearly 2,000 miles away. I missed my sister’s daughter, who was not even one when I left, who had blossomed into a precocious, lovely child. It pained me to watch her grow not before my eyes, but through the lens of a camera, in pictures and the occasional video chat.

If it had just been me, I may have never returned from that trip home. However, I had my husband and my 16 month old son to consider, not mention our extensive fur family of cats and dogs back home. Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to convince my husband to agree to move. He was just as charmed and captivated by the Southwest as I was, and having been born and raised in the small Virginia town we were currently living in, he was ready for a change of scenery. So we threw ourselves into the endeavor of orchestrating a cross country move while considering the comfort and happiness of four cats, four dogs, and one young teething toddler.

I shared plans of our intentions to move to Albuquerque with my family, who of course, were thrilled. My mother, now living in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, had been trying to lure us closer since the birth of her grandson. She revealed that the current tenants of the house I had grown up in would not be renewing their lease in May and that it would be available for us to rent should we desire.

Of course, I more than desired. Since I was young, I had daydreamed of raising my own children in that house. I loved that house like one loves a favorite aunt. I felt that it was as constant and caring a component of my childhood and adolescence as my parents had been. My homesickness for that house was almost as great as my homesickness for Albuquerque.

So it was set, I was coming home, truly, in every sense of the word.

For the next few months we worked tirelessly through all of the tasks that precede a cross country move, with saying goodbye to my husband’s family being the hardest. Since the early days of my relationship with my husband, his parents had never shown me anything but love and kindness. From the Christmas dinner where I had the pleasure of meeting them to my pregnancy and the months that followed, they had always doted on me as though I was their own daughter. Having the two of them as a wonderful source of support with my family so far away.

That is why it felt like a terrible betrayal to confess to them that I would be taking their beloved eldest son and their only grandson far away into the cactus littered, scorpion infested wasteland of New Mexican desert. Thankfully, their love and support never waned, and they helped out in every way possible during our remaining time in Virginia.

The months, weeks, then days evaporated away, and finally we arrived at our last day in Virginia. The plan was to send our then 20 month old son and myself ahead on a plane, while my husband would remain for a few more days to tie up loose ends and then undertake the daunting task of traversing the country by car. A car filled with our cats, dogs, and the houseplants I couldn’t bear to part with.

I thought my excitement for returning to Albuquerque would eclipse any of the usual pangs of apprehension and nostalgia that creep in on moving day. However as our car crawled through the familiar mountains on the way to the airport, I noticed that spring had incipiently began to take root through this land. This beautiful, lush wonderland, where I had moved to on a lark to escape a broken heart and had unexpectedly found a home. The place where I had met my husband, the land upon which I had become a mother. One look at the slowly unfurling dogwood blossoms, and I felt a swell of sobs in my throat that I struggled to choke down. But I did, I held them back with a smile. Virginia had served its (beautiful) purpose for me, and now I was coming home.