sunset over the bay

The sun is setting over the bay outside the window of the Cape Cod cottage we’ve come to love.  The sky is painted every shade of peach through indigo and the ocean reflects the sky in chrome versions of the same.  The big oak I’ve nicknamed “the bonsai tree” is inky black in stark relief against the watercolor sunset.  The only sound is the predictable hum of the Black Hawk helicopters practicing over head, so routine that the children don’t even bother to run, shouting, onto the porch to look up any more.  The house is amazingly peaceful, considering the launch clock is ticking down… about 18 hours is all we have left.

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind; they always are.  The inevitable and incessant packing and unpacking are my least favorite parts of our life.  It looks romantic from the outside, jetting off to far flung places, working from the tops of sea cliffs using internet in our tents, writing home with tall tales of adventure abroad… and it is, largely, but it’s also a lot of work.  I’m always reminded of that as we make the big push toward yet another cliff and the adventure morphs and changes and begins again.  Our nomadic life is a lot of wonderful things, but it’s not a perpetual vacation.

The children have been troopers.  They’ve sorted, cleaned, and packed the little treasures accumulated over a summer in southern Massachusetts.  Ezra solemnly kissed each of his stuffed pets on the nose before lowering them into the paste board box headed for Aunt Dianne’s basement.  Hannah cavalierly threw out half of her writing and art projects in favor of a brand new journal and the promise of more adventures to turn into comic books stories about her super-hero brothers.  Elisha has run a million trips up and down the spiral staircases (there are three!) delivering clothes to laundry baskets, random items to plastic packing tubs, and enthusiastically keeping Mama plied with enough tea to keep her moving forward on the packing project.  Gabriel has hauled out more than his share of trash bags, scoured bathrooms, run load after load of laundry and hunted the entire house until he found the two most elusive items:  Ezra’s striped sock (hand knit by mom, we’re not leaving without it!) and Daddy’s hide-and-go-seek Keen sandal.

Jonathan & Gabe, skating on the cow pond

Our friends prove their gold plated love for us, once again, by taking in car loads of boxed stuffed toys, closets full of printer and computer gear and by cheerfully hugging us goodbye, one more time, without too many tears.  I think it’s hardest for the Wood kids.  We found one stowed away under the back seat of the van as we tried to pull out at our last visit.  We won’t mention any names… Jonathan.  Lois cheerfully waves off their sad faces and repeats her Miller Mantra:  “When you see the van in the driveway, they’re here.  When you don’t, they’re not.  They’ll be back.”  We mamas miss each other at least as much as the kids do each other.  We couldn’t do what we do without the handful of chosen family who support us, love us, and keep the mailbox from clogging completely when we’re gone for months on end!  You know who you are… and thank you.

the art & the artist

The house is almost empty.  The guitar lays across the end of my bed, tossed aside in favor of another virtual goodbye over internet chat with another far flung friend earlier this afternoon.  By the door are six big plastic tubs packed with our usual suspects:  three outfits each, kitchen and cooking gear, health and hygiene items, tents, hennessy hammocks, sleeping bags, mats and the ever present pile of school and fun related items.  Our theme song is playing the background and I hear Ezra singing along at the top of his voice:  “I gotta leave… I gotta go… where?  I don’t know?” (“These are my GUYS, Mom, I got all their stuff on my ipod,” he adds… as if I don’t already know his favorite band is Ryanhood.)  He’s walking around the house in just his blue pants with a huge red and orange firebird painted on his chest, he was Hannah’s art project du jour this afternoon.  The best news of the day:  Daddy isn’t going in to work tomorrow, which means we’ll be on the road much earlier than planned and in the arms of our dear friends, the Adams, well before bedtime.

Excitement is running high, so is exhaustion on the part of the grown-ups.  Launch day is always a high point for our family.  There is nothing, for us, like pushing off into the great unknown, thousands of miles and many days before us.  Like blank journal pages they await, to be filled with as yet untold stories, high adventure and crushing defeat.  It seems the “crushing defeat” stories are the ones you all like best… the ones in which cold showers, miserable cold and vomit abound.  We forgive you, in the end, those ARE the best stories.

If you think of us, pray for health, for safety and for lots of learning as we go.  On the immediate radar are four sweet visits with friends and family, New Orleans and the Alamo.  Once we cross the border, all bets are off, as are any firm plans; you’ll have to check in on us here to keep up!  If there’s somewhere you’d like us to visit for you and photograph or write about, e-mail us.  We’re already planning to hit the birth town of one sweet little Guatemalan girl, adopted into a NH family.  We’d love to hear from you, and we’ll write back when we can.

Let the Edventure continue….