Note to Self: Leave House

I’ve been stuck at home all winter

A white calendar icon greeted me when I fired up my iPad for the first time in a month: “Friday 9: LEAVE HOUSE.”

The message disoriented me for a moment, and made me chuckle—it wasn’t the 9th, and though I did feel desperately cooped up at home most days, I certainly hadn’t typed an entry in my phone calendar to remind me to get out.

I soon realized it was a calendar entry from January 9th, the last time I opened my iPad to write. The note was truncated from a since-deleted reminder to leave my house unlocked for the furnace cleaning guy. I tried unsuccessfully to take a screen shot, then before I could turn on my phone camera to capture it, the screen refreshed with the correct date and the reminder that I had “No events today.”

The message was lost, but the irony was not.

For two months since I turned around my van and abandoned my winter road trip, I’ve sat alone at home wondering what to do with my life. The days have felt long, and slow, and mostly wasted. It’s the kind of quiet and stillness that I’ve craved at many points in my life—a spaciousness that yearns to be filled with creativity, curiosity, and fun. I could write! I could read! I could reach out to friends! I’ve done some of those things, a little bit, but it hasn’t been enough to fill the yawning hours and days and weeks of an endless winter.

Sitting in this emptiness, I’ve developed a scrolling habit I don’t like. I notice with every pang of discomfort a dopamine-induced urge to distract, and I usually give in, toggling between the despair of the news, and the garbage that is social media. I am aware of not wanting to click even as my finger moves magnetized toward the familiar icons on my phone, like the mysterious motion of the pointer on an Ouija board. Each unconscious click spills another hour of life through my fingers like sand.

I would be better off on the beach sifting actual sand through my fingers, with grains embedded in the skin of my knees as I smelled the salt air, watching terns circle and drop into the waves. That was my reality one year ago, on the coast of Baja, Mexico, and it never felt like wasted time. It felt like exactly where I was supposed to be, and exactly what I was meant to be doing with my one wild and precious life.

So what am I doing here, alone in my house in New Hampshire, behind frost-covered windows, with days and nights dipping below zero?

I am awaiting the precious hours when Seth is home.

I turned my van around two months ago because I couldn’t bear the thought of being without him for an indefinite length of time (six months? A year? More?). It’s not that I can’t function on my own—I proved to myself last year that I can. I wasn’t even that lonely in my six months on the road, even though he only visited once. I had the terns, and the hummingbirds, and my dogs, and the whales and dolphins, and my fellow travelers. I had gorgeous views out my van windows every day. I had a map and a guidebook and a tiny home on wheels, ready to explore.

I felt pulled to escape the winter again this year and repeat my epic Baja adventure, but something held me back. It was the people I was leaving behind. It was the uncertainty of the future. It was the inability to reconcile how I could live my life on the road when my husband’s life was firmly rooted in New Hampshire—in his job, his projects, our home.

I came back because I am committed to this person and I wanted to find a way to make our lives work together. Years of daydreaming had not yielded a viable solution for Seth to join me on the road, partly due to finances and logistics, and partly because he’s just not that interested in van life. He likes his job, he likes his projects, he likes spending summers with his parents at the lake. And he seems to like these things more than he likes the idea of waking up camped on a beach in Baja or next to a glacier in Alaska. He also likes financial stability, which in this economy is getting harder to come by (raise your hand if your health insurance just doubled!).

So I stare out my bedroom window every day at the same tree branches covered with snow, the oak across the street still grasping dry leaves. I watch the same frost tendrils creep across the glass and then melt in the afternoon sun. I make a mental note (if not a physical one) to “LEAVE HOUSE” at some point every day, usually for an afternoon ski with the dogs. By the time I get home, Seth is here, and we clean up and curl up and eat dinner on the couch and watch a show. I dread falling asleep on weeknights because I know that when I wake up the next day, he’ll be gone, and I’ll have to fill the hours all over again.

This week, though—and for the rest of the winter—I’m down to one-dog ski trips. Baxter had been limping on her right hind leg ever since one of our adventures a few weeks ago, so I’d booked an appointment with a canine orthopedist. I was afraid she would need the same surgery she had on her left knee two years ago—the cranial cruciate ligament, or CCL—the canine equivalent of a human ACL. She was already scheduled for surgery in March to remove the metal plate from her left leg, in an effort to resolve her residual lameness. But I wasn’t prepared when the vet confirmed that now her right knee was unstable too, and he offered to perform CCL surgery that same day to save me another six-hour round-trip drive.

I hemmed and hawed, not at all emotionally prepared to put my pup under the knife and then confine her to a pen for the next two months. It would mean canceling her 9th birthday party with my parents, when we dress in party hats and feed the dogs “Australian Shepherd’s Pie” off of our bone china at the dinner table. It would mean no more skijor adventures or walks or runs. It would mean Seth and me not leaving the house together for more than a few hours, because we can’t bring her with us. It would mean no more snuggles on the couch, no more falling asleep with her curled up between us, no more waking up to wet kisses.

It broke my heart.

But I resigned myself to the inevitable and went ahead with the surgery that day, in the hopes that Baxter would heal in time for our spring and summer camping trips and our visits to Seth’s parents’ lake house. It will be 8-12 weeks before she can be out and about again safely, and probably longer before she’s cleared to run up and down the stairs or jump on the bed. The timeline will extend further if we proceed with the additional surgery to remove the first metal plate, once the second one has healed. It’s traumatic and sad and heartbreaking seeing her wild spirit confined, and knowing there are only so many minutes out of the day I can sit on the hardwood floor scratching her ears and icing her knee. She’s only allowed to leave the pen to go potty.

Yet I take some solace in thinking that perhaps this is another reason why I felt the pull to turn my van around in December. I sensed that something might happen while I was on the road, though I didn’t know what it might be. On the one hand, this surgery was not an emergency; I could have reduced her activity level and waited until I got home to take care of it. But on the other hand, it would have been no fun for Baxter to be stuck in the van while Laney and I went on adventures. And even if I had come home this summer, we would have had to put the surgery off until fall; otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to travel on weekends to visit Seth’s parents. That would be a long time to postpone the inevitable, so a part of me is relieved that we were able to get surgery right away, and she’s on the slow road to recovery. It makes these long winter days almost seem worth it.

Even as I’ve languished through these dark days, I’ve been on a mission to figure out how to build a life here with my husband that I don’t long to escape. I’m exploring employment opportunities that would get me out of the house and engaging with the community, because being home alone all day every day isn’t good for anybody. Seth and I have also revisited our remaining options for bringing children into our lives, though we are no longer sure that’s the right path for us, as the grief of our previous losses remains.

Would I feel more fulfilled if I had a job? Kids? Both? Either choice would be a big shift from the childless, self-employed, wandering life I’ve grown accustomed to. I just know that the version of my life where I stay in New Hampshire to be with my husband does not work when I’m stuck home alone all day. I need to explore my options.

Today I was supposed to “LEAVE HOUSE” to hike with a friend, then go visit my parents for the weekend. I’ve been itching for some company and a change of scenery. But ever since my visit to the vet on Monday, I’ve had a tickle in my throat that had me concerned enough that I canceled my plans. If there’s a chance that I’m getting sick, the last thing I want to do is expose three octogenarians to my germs.

So I am stuck at home, counting down the weeks and months until I can escape in my van to the coast of Maine, or sleep in our 1991 Winnebago in my in-laws’ driveway at the lake. I’ve made it through the first half of winter thanks to the joy of my skis sliding through snow. But now that February is here, I’m already dreaming of that first mild day in March when I can pull on a pair of spandex shorts and ride my bike to the edge of town, watching the glow of sunset on the mountains.

I did manage to “LEAVE HOUSE” once today, for Baxter’s potty break. The short walk from the back door into my yard reminded me of one of my favorite aspects of van life—the fact that so much of life takes place outside. Just those few minutes of feeling sun on my cheeks and listening to my boots crunch in the snow rejuvenated me. If I was meant to abandon my road trip to take care of my pup, perhaps her recovery period was also meant to take care of me—to force me to put on my coat, hat, gloves, and boots and step out the door, if only for a moment.

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