Wanderlust or Throw Pillows?

I dreamt of living out of a backpack and wound up missing my balcony chair.

The view from my balcony, that evening Space X had launched a rocket.

And… before we start…

I know there are a lot of new folks here, and you may be wondering, Who is this calm, reflective woodland Buddha? Where’s the rage-filled chaos goblin who usually shows up armed with a flamethrower and a 3,000-word manifesto against the Machine?

She’s still here.

I’ve just gotten a little tired of yelling lately. Sometimes I need to wander into the woods, have a tasteful existential crisis, and remember I’m a human being before I’m a professional hater.

If you’re enjoying the ride, whether it’s the fire or the philosophy, you can become a paid subscriber for $5 a month. Or toss me a Venmo tip(link at bottom of essay) It helps put gas in the car, coffee in my cup, and, because this is real life, toilet paper in my kids’ bathroom.

Thanks for being here.

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For the better part of the last two years, I’ve been living like a slightly overeducated tumbleweed.

It all started in the summer of 2024 when the owner of the condo I was renting decided to sell. Which, as it turns out, is landlord code for, “Congratulations, you’ve been selected for another unexpected life lesson.”

Truthfully, it was probably time for all of us to take a breather. My daughter, ever the creative spirit, because apparently artistic chaos is hereditary, found a place in West Hollywood and began building her career. My son and I headed off to Minneapolis, thanks to the generosity of a dear friend we had a place to lay our heads and he entered a program that allowed him to finish his senior year of high school while knocking out his freshman year of college.

I’d always known my son was college-bound, though his college savings account had repeatedly sacrificed itself in the name of car repairs, emergency vet visits, and the thousand tiny financial fires that come with raising kids. So when this opportunity appeared, it felt like a gift, a chance to finally get him launched.

And maybe, just maybe, it was time for me to start nudging my little birdies out of the nest so Mama could finally take a solo flight of her own. After decades of being air traffic control, ground crew, and the in-flight snack service, I pictured myself gliding off into the sunset with a backpack and a laptop.

Naturally, I imagined myself as some sort of graceful migratory swan. Looking back, I was probably more like an over-caffeinated seagull with reading glasses and unresolved wanderlust.

So once again, I emptied my life into piles.

This wasn’t my first rodeo. Years earlier, I’d packed up the kids and headed off to Central and South America for what I envisioned as a year-long grand adventure. In my mind, we were intrepid explorers. In my children’s minds, we were apparently victims of parental insanity.

At one point we stayed at a jungle lodge where there were no cell towers, no Wi-Fi, and we were advised not to touch the trees at night because nobody seemed entirely sure what might be lurking there. Nothing says “family vacation” quite like reassuring your children, “I’m sure it’s probably harmless.”

I loved every minute of it.

My children, however, were less enchanted. For them, the lack of Wi-Fi constituted a humanitarian crisis. They regarded my dream of unplugging and communing with nature as a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. What I viewed as magical and adventurous, they experienced as several months of being held hostage by mosquitoes and intermittent electricity.

So what was supposed to be a year-long sojourn was eventually cut short, and we limped back to civilization—or at least to places with reliable internet and fewer mysterious nocturnal tree creatures. (my kids, older and wiser now, reflect back on this opportunity with fondness)

So, like any family returning from the wild, we slowly began nesting again. Furniture appeared. Artwork found its way onto the walls. Keepsakes accumulated. I even rescued boxes I’d faithfully kept in storage.

Apparently, I suffer from recurring bouts of wanderlust followed by equally enthusiastic episodes of domesticity, so I was wise enough to keep a few important things like beds, and my kids favorites keepsakes their “stuff“.

Every few years, I convince myself I’m destined to roam the earth with nothing but a backpack and a laptop, and then somehow I end up buying throw pillows and arguing with myself over whether I really need another houseplant.

The second purge was even more ruthless. I whittled my life down to a handful of containers filled mostly with photographs, DVDs that technology insists I no longer need, a few precious mementos, and an owl my dad had given me. The owl made the cut. Everything else got voted off the island.

In my mind, this was the beginning of my next chapter. I’d spent nearly my entire adult life raising my kids on my own. Even during the years when there was technically a dad in the picture, I was still the cruise director, accountant, chef, therapist, chauffeur, and emergency contact. I was tired.

And I had this dream.

By the time my son was in college and my daughter had found her footing, I’d become a full-fledged nomad. Just me, a backpack, my laptop, and the kind of gypsy spirit that makes travel bloggers look annoyingly enlightened.

Then life did what life does.

Politics got weird. The world got weird. Everything started feeling like one giant game of Jenga with somebody shaking the table, and suddenly I didn’t want to be halfway around the world. I wanted to be close to my kids.

Last summer I spent several months in Maui, which sounds impossibly glamorous when you say it out loud. And in many ways, it was. I stayed with friends, lived in a beautiful home, and got to wake up in paradise.

But somewhere between the sunsets and the ocean breezes, I discovered something shocking.

I missed my junk.

Not all of it. Just my weird little ecosystem.

These days, I’m spending the summer with my sister. I adore her. She has welcomed me into her beautiful home.

I’ve been blessed by friends and family who have made room for me in their lives, even when I wasn’t quite sure where my own was headed.

But none of it is mine.

You see, my daughter and I share her tiny one-bedroom apartment. Really, I’ve always thought of it as hers and let her decorate it accordingly. It works beautifully for the two of us.

Until summer.

Because that’s when my son comes to stay with her.

And suddenly it’s three people, three cats, one Chihuahua, and enough personality conflicts to qualify for our own reality show.

Even the cats seem concerned.

So I spend the summers, living out my nomad fever dream.

And lately, I’ve felt that familiar tug.

Not the urge to leave.

The urge to come home.

I miss my routines.

I miss having twenty-minute power naps with my cats, which they generously allow me to participate in between plotting whatever cat cult activities they’re involved in. I miss waking up surrounded by all three of them, wondering whether I’m the beloved matriarch of the family or merely the centerpiece of some furry occult ceremony.

I miss talking to my pets every day.

I miss walking my Chihuahua four times a day because his bladder is roughly the size of a Tic Tac.

I miss my ridiculous pink Paris Hilton French press, the one my kids bought me after accidentally breaking my old coffee maker. Apparently they decided that what I really needed during middle age was a coffee press with a giant pink heart on it designed by Paris Hilton.

Honestly, they weren’t wrong.

I miss my balcony chair and that sweet, crooked view of the moon that never quite lined up unless I leaned a little. A reminder, perhaps, that not everything beautiful arrives perfectly framed.

I miss watering my plants, although I’ve recently been informed that my plant children have all perished in the California heat. May they rest in peace. Their memorial service will be held next to the basil.

I miss my squirrel friends.

I miss my crows.

I hope they’re out there somewhere wondering why the weird lady who brought snacks disappeared.

The whole experience reminds me of the tiny house craze. Everyone romanticizes it.

“I just want to simplify my life!”

And then you actually move into the tiny house and discover that tiny houses are, in fact, tiny. You realize there is no escaping your own bodily functions and everybody can hear your morning business. Not that “everybody” means an audience. But still. You understand.

There’s the Pinterest version.

And then there’s Tuesday.

I’ve always thought of myself as someone who wasn’t attached to things. Things were just things. Pretty objects with memories attached. Replaceable. People lose everything in fires. Tragedies happen. I always assumed I’d be fine because, after all, they’re only possessions.

But maybe that isn’t what I miss.

Maybe I miss anchors.

I miss walking down my hallway every morning and seeing the watercolor painting my son made when he was little, using ice and watercolors. I miss glancing at the photos of our adventures when the kids were young and remembering all the versions of ourselves we’ve been.

Maybe home was never the furniture.

Maybe home was the evidence.

The evidence that we lived.

The evidence that we laughed.

The evidence that we survived all those years together.

And maybe that’s why I understand now, in a way I never did before, why people grieve the loss of things. Not because they’re expensive. Not because they’re irreplaceable.

But because sometimes the objects become witnesses.

Little sacred artifacts from ordinary lives.

Lives that, while messy and exhausting and occasionally held together with coffee and sheer maternal stubbornness, mattered.

I still think I’ll be okay.

I’ve always been pretty good at standing in the unknown.

But these days, I find myself wondering whether what I’m really longing for isn’t stability or certainty or even a particular place.

Maybe what I’m longing for is simply to feel settled.

To wake up in the middle of my little circle of cats.

To drink coffee from my absurd pink French press.

To argue with my Chihuahua’s bladder.

And to sit in my balcony chair, talking to squirrels like the eccentric woodland witch I’ve apparently become.

I don’t really have a grand conclusion or some profound life lesson to wrap all of this up with a pretty bow. I’m not suddenly abandoning my dreams of adventure, and I’m certainly not suggesting that happiness can be purchased one throw pillow or Paris Hilton French press at a time.

I’m just paying attention.

Because this longing caught me by surprise.

Maybe what I’m missing isn’t the stuff itself.

Maybe I’m missing the feeling of being rooted. The comfort of familiar rhythms.

Or maybe I’m simply a middle-aged woman who spent years dreaming of becoming a nomad only to discover that she is, in fact, deeply attached to a pink French press and three judgmental cats.

Either way, I’m trying not to rush past this unexpected feeling or explain it away. I’m just sitting with it, listening to it, and trusting that eventually it will tell me something I need to know.

Until then, I’ll keep showing up, keep embracing the unknown, and keep hoping my crows haven’t replaced me with another weird lady who brings snacks.

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