I readily admit that I enjoy Facebook Memories. Looking back at where I was one, two, even eight years ago on a specific day reminds me of how far I have come. How fast life moves and how easy it is to forget where you were and as my Fifty-fifth birthday approaches rapidly, there is a lot of reflecting to do.
Eight years ago today, I was in my Sport Touring Gear office, working on a video camera set up for the motorcycle and Lexie is sitting proudly in her Carrier. (video link) Six Years ago today, I was in Connecticut in my ’78 VW Bus – Sandy, saying Goodbye to my dream of living on a sailboat. Five Years ago today, I was featured in an ad for Ocean Kayak. Three Years ago today, I was in Florida saying Goodbye to my friends Kevin and Andrea who were big supports of Lexie during her Cancer battle and saying Hello to my new friends Thea and David who were big supporters of my attempt to paddle from Canada to Key West, FL. (story here) That kayak trip was an attempt to heal from losing Lexie to cancer and finding love again. A Love for life and a Love for the heart.
It was the memory from One year ago today that truly hit me. One year ago on a cold morning in New York, I quietly left my friends Thim and Tony’s house in upstate New York; a house I had been renovating for more than a year, but more importantly, I was leaving the place where I had been living for Six month. A place where I grew as a person, where I discovered so many wonderful foods, shared so many laughs and met many truly amazing people through them, but most importantly, a place where I witnessed what it means to be in love. The love they have for each other was the love I was searching for. A partnership that compliments each other, helps each other grow and is so in tune like an instrument where one note can not make a song, but two can; two note playing off each others in harmony. It was a beautiful thing to witness. Saying Goodbye was difficult. So I said Goodbye the night before and then I snuck out early in the morning before they woke because I was not sure I could handle the Goodbye in the morning. I had to leave, but I did not want to.
I set out that morning in my plain white Ford Transit Cargo Van with a plain white cargo trailer in tow, bound for Washington State, but first I was to stop at my friend Jenn’s house in Louisville, KY to put in a new wood floor. It was there I would celebrate my Fifty-Fourth Birthday with her and her family. From there I would continue Westbound to celebrate Christmas and New Years Eve with my friends Steve and Marina in Newport, OR. Then I would head up to Olympia, WA where I would be house sitting for my friends Colleen and Dale whom I had met back in 2013 when I passed through the area in my VW Bus. The same Bus I was in six years prior on the Coast of New England. I was scheduled to be in Olympia for 3 months.
House Sitting in Olympia, Washington would afford me the opportunity to transform my Plain White Cargo Van into a Custom Class B RV thanks to the large heated garage Colleen and Dale offered me to work in during the winter. Washington also had another allure – the potential for love as there was a friend I knew here with potential to become something more. Between January and March, Olympia saw a record Snow Fall which paralyzed much of Western Washington and the Van Build was taking much longer than expected and was becoming much costlier than anticipated. As for that love interest, well it too was proving to be a costly endeavor – the price – my heart – trampled on with reckless abandon.
By the time Spring arrived and my friends Colleen and Dale returned from their trip south, I was beaten down by both the van project and someone I once cared for. Colleen and Dale offered me a place to stay to finish the van so I turned one-hundred percent of my attention to that and began a healing process for my heart which began with a trip back to New York to be with family. When I returned to Olympia, I had a new theme for the van. Gone was the Sailboat Theme and now I’d be building a Vermont Barn theme. Thanks to my new friend and neighbor Dan, I also had access to weathered barn/fence wood as well. The van build took on a whole new level of energy and as I worked on it, I was also working on my heart and doing some heavy healing and exploration into my life.
It was late July when I took off to visit an Antique Building Materials yard in Tacoma, WA. I was searching for old rusty metal barn roofing to use as my ceiling in the van. I had scoured the internet looking for panels and found most of them to be rather expensive. Who would have though that used rusty metal roofing would be more expensive than new, but they were. The least expensive and closest option was this place in Tacoma, the others were all two to three hours away. I arrived there in the afternoon only to discover that they didn’t have enough pieces and the pieces they did have weren’t that old. In fact, they still had the Home Depot barcodes on some of the pieces. I wandered around trying to come up with other ideas and see if they had anything else I could use as I was also looking for a bucket to use as a sink, but it was a lost cause.
Getting back in my van, annoyed, I called my friend Rebecca to vent. I wondered out loud if there was a way to quickly rust new metal roofing and as I was driving back to Olympia, she got on the computer and found some videos on Youtube showing how to do just that. So off to Home Depot I went. I picked up some brand new galvanized metal roofing and Muriatic Acid. Now all I needed was a galvanized bucket for the sink, which they didn’t have, and some Hydrogen Peroxide so the next stop was Fred Meyer, a grocery store out here.
While I had been to this store before, I had never parked in the section I did this time and entering the store from this location, I discovered a garden center – which had the very bucket I needed for the sink. Filled with inspiration, I walked inside and into their Home Collection area which I had never seen before. Everything I was seeing was filling my head with ideas. Rugs, Decorations, I was seeing inspiration everywhere. Then out of the blue, this woman turns the corner and smiled at me. For the first time in a long time, my heart fluttered and I smiled back. Next thing I know we’re talking and then we say Goodbye. I stood there motionless for a minute. I tried to go back to being inspired, but I just could not get her out of my mind. It was then I did something I’ve never done before – I tracked her down and in what I am sure was the most awkward attempt, I asked her to to join me for a cup of coffee or dinner. It was after she said yes, that she informed me, I still hadn’t told her my name.
So here I am today, thinking back to that very day I left New York bound for Washington. The van is different than I originally imagined, the trip has been different than I imagined, I’m living someplace different than I imagined and I found love someplace I could never have imagined – in a supermarket.
And once again, I am reminded of these inspiring words by Paul Coelho.
“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”
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It will four years on December 24th, since I lost Lexie to cancer and for the first time since that day, I am looking forward to celebrating my Birthday and Christmas and I know she’ll be there in spirit.
Hope you enjoy these pictures – all from December 3rd throughout the years. Well all but the one of my Supermarket Find.
(update February 16, 2020: Sadly my Supermarket find had an expiration date. No worries though. We had a good time together and I got to see a side of Washington I had not before and meet some wonderful people. It’s really hard for someone who’s a vagabond to settle down. Almost as hard as it is for someone who has well established roots to pick up and travel like I do.)
I love your story, Larry.