Here we go...

First, a quick breakdown of the craziness that has happened in the last five months.

• My husband’s car died.

• My husband died.

• My car died.

• I bought a new car.

• My guest cottage pipes burst and flooded the entire building, requiring insurance and a water mitigation company’s involvement. (currently in progress)

• My main house pipes burst, requiring a complete overhaul of all plumbing throughout the house. (half finished)

• I got sick for the first time in 5 years. I haven’t had so much as a cold since covid 2021, so maybe it’s 5 years’ worth of germs caught up to me, because that’s about how great I feel.

I’m heading home tomorrow, with my two pups, my new car, and a very stuffed nose/head/face to navigate the rest of the plumbing/insurance nightmare.

And I am happy.

Am I happy that my husband is not here to help me figure all this shit out and make me tea? No. That part makes me extremely sad and sometimes pitifully so. Last night, I had to remind myself not to use his Superman T-shirt as my hanky.

But I am so happy to be heading home, to our home, where, after the first six years of our roller coaster life, we settled into the hillside of a gorgeous Appalachian community to live out the next six roller coaster years. We made a home there, a cozy one, a creative one, a hard-working one. A lot of people thought we were crazy moving to West Virginia, and maybe we were, but we loved it. I still love it.

When I get back, I will have to haul wood and kindling and get a fire going immediately, and I am bizarrely excited about this. I’ll have to inspect the dogs’ fence to make sure no branches wiped any of it out. Fix it if they did. I’ll have to get the water back on and make sure the hot water tank refills. Though I won’t have a shower for god knows how long because apparently plumbers don’t open up walls? What is this mystery of home ownership that I was unaware of?

I’ll have to check on the internet because that is currently out–I only know because my security cameras are offline. I’m hoping the crew just unplugged it to do their work, but at this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if the fiber optics froze from the street to my house. Hell, the winter was so cold up there, the internet itself might have frozen in the air. I know the internet is not in the air, but it seems like it should be, doesn’t it? And if it were in the air, it definitely would have frozen this year.

I’ll have to make lots of calls to keep the insurance company on task, contractors to fix everything, HVAC to fix the heating system in my main house (the ONE thing that I had already planned on doing), and another plumber to replace my hose fixture outside, which inexplicably also died in October, along with the hot tub. Sadly, that one will probably be a permanent casualty.

What a mess. But it’s my mess. And I’m looking forward to cleaning it all up because, along with that mess, there is a gorgeous pending West Virginia spring (I see 70’s in my 10-day forecast in the first week of March), there are thousands of songbirds, seeds to start, shelves of books and games and art supplies, my coveted down comforter, a routine at the gym to reclaim (also probably where I will be showering for the foreseeable future) visits from the kids to pick out some precious belongings from their dad, a little independent bookstore and good friends to meet up with, a riverside park where I walk my dogs, and emerging daffodils I planted last fall just for the occasion of my return home.

My head is full of snot, I have two days of driving ahead of me, and everyone keeps asking me tentatively, gently: How are you feeling about getting back?

Good, my dear friends. Really, really good. I have been in the warm embrace of Florida family for three months, and I have a home full of love to return to. When I left in November, I felt like I was leaving Joe behind. Now, in a tiny way, I get to go back to him. It won’t look like it used to look, it won’t be what it used to be. I know it will be sad and difficult in a new way. But it’s still good. It’s still my home.

I’m 50 years old, about to live on my own for the first time, and there is a small part of me that is strangely, optimistically curious about what this is going to be like. Sometimes you don’t get what you want or expect out of life–actually, most of the time you don’t, or at least I don’t–but what a remarkable gift to realize that you love your life regardless. That’s where I’m at. Yes, a lot of it freaking sucks. But I still love my life, and I want to return to it. Feeling that, writing it down, saying it out loud, gives me so much hope that I will be okay.

(Though, maybe check in again after I have to shower at the gym for three weeks…)