My Head and My Heart

I'm already feeling nostalgic for the things I haven't left yet.  And this post seems even more relevant now in light of recent health events in both mine and Bill's families who are thousands of miles away.   I'm wondering if my head and my heart are on different wavelengths.

It has been about 4 years since I packed up and moved so I think, much like childbirth, my brain has erased the traumatic parts of severing relationships and comfortable comforts so that I can go ahead and do it again with a hopeful feeling that I've made a really good decision.

If I think about it, in the last 10 years I have lived in 8 houses and Bill has lived in 7 (three of those we lived in together).  In fact in the last 10 years even my poor cat has lived in 5 houses (and we're about ready to force him into a 6th).  We just get urges to do something different and have that "grass must be greener" idea in our heads I suppose.

There are some perks to having lived all over the place.  Being a medium-sized-root-couple (ones who don't set down super deep roots, but also have more depth than superficial golf course grass roots) means that for the most part we can travel almost anywhere and have a friend to grab dinner with or a spare bedroom to sleep in.  Through 7 degrees of separation we even managed to find a family to stay with in New Zealand (who by the way not only are cool with us staying with them but are willing to be our "emergency text friends" so that we can let them know when we go in and out of the backcountry and then they can call the NZ police if we don't text them when we said we'd exit the backcountry - basically an Aaron Ralston foolproof plan) when we arrive and I have no doubt that the interconnectedness of our network will continue to impress me.

But there are still Drawbacks.  Like:  I miss out on lots of important things that happen in important people's lives. Dance Recitals.  Birthdays.  Graduations.  And even dumb stuff like fights with coworkers or putting new curtains in the bedroom or getting a new pet.  And I'm having serious f.o.m.o about not being in Salt Lake for ski season this winter.  Most especially I'm feeling guilty about not being around to support our families in California and Alabama during some serious health crises because our families live in a different state *loud drum beat*.

I was having lunch with a friend today who is from the Southeast.  She and I were talking about how much The Head and The Heart song "Rivers and Roads" resonates - and most especially with me right now as I prepare to leave.   She was telling me she can't listen to it on the way out of Tennessee, her home state, because it hurts too much (listening to it on the way in is OK though).

In July when I drove from Salt Lake City to Denver to drop my sister off in her new city, I added the song to her playlist because I thought it would be an important sound track to her life.  She tells me now that she can't listen to it with out crying.

Truth is, neither can I.

There's a line in the song that says, "So if you don't know what to make of this.  Then we will not relate." and there is something true about the medium-rooted and short-rooted folk.  There is a deep sense of longing attached with the still deeper sense of adventure that tug at each other all the time.  At the same time that I'm daydreaming about our van and about the canyons and mountains and beaches we'll explore, I'm simultaneously mourning the sense of stability I have with my friends and my Salt Lake home (and in a way - but less strong - the other home I used to live in too) - wishing I was buying a season pass to Solitude and that I'd be around to see my friends' new home they just bought or the new baby our other friends are about to birth or to go to music festivals that I know are coming up.   So there's a constant tug between my head and my heart - about what makes logical sense versus what makes emotional sense - a tug between stability and novelty - the divide between what I think I want and what I'm supposed to want.

I can't imagine that I'll ever stop having this internal struggle.

Bill is teaching himself to play the song on the ukulele now.  Excuse me while I go cry into my otter hoodie.

Taryn