I came up with the idea of leaving it all behind and taking the road. We were watching a show about RVs, about a couple buying one to travel around the United States. I said to John, “What if we did that?” John replied, “That wouldn’t be so bad.”
For the first two or three weeks, we decided not to tell anyone. I don’t think we were truly sure if we both wanted to do this whole “leave it all behind and take the road” thing.
The following days felt almost surreal. I remember picking up my mom at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border, spending the whole day with her, and realizing that something had changed in our relationship. She didn’t know it yet, but my absence over the next two years was already taking shape.
I clearly remember the silence when she asked how I was. But what I remember most is her firm “no” when I offered to take her to the pharmacy for her vitamins. “No,” she said. “I didn’t come to run errands. I came to enjoy my daughters.” Then she added, “Vitamins won’t make me happy. Now, I do everything to have a good time and enjoy.”
The weeks that followed were wonderfully quiet—I would have enjoyed them just as they were. But something was already germinating from the inside—the decision; the decision to “take the road.” The decision to embrace uncertainty, to keep escaping the ordinary in every way I could.
Photo from our January 2019 trip to Reno, when we explored cities to live in for a year before embarking on our nomadic adventure.
