What We Lived Out of Suitcases Forever?

The dread of returning to my stuff

I’m a road person now. A carny with no midway.

I wear the same sweatshirt four days in a row and then move on to a new sweatshirt. I’ve got six matchbooks in my purse, collected from courtesy trays on hostess stands across the southwest and great lakes. I can’t remember the last time I physically lit a match, but they’re free and they’re souvenirs— dangerous ones, considering the fact that the kid is getting to an age where she can do things like pull plugs out of wall sockets and use a wheeled suitcase to pull herself to standing.

Speaking of the kid: My toddler has embraced the lifestyle of the road. She is feral and her naps are chaos. She screams with delight in restaurants and flops herself out of the stroller unless she is buckled in nanoseconds after being placed in it. Every diaper change is like an MMA fight embedded in an ice dance long program. She has invented words for objects and activities that sound nothing like the object or activity to which they refer, and I just let her keep using her nonsense words rather than correct her. When she wants something, the gestures toward it and flaps her hand around and says “EH? EH? EH?” She yells at other people’s dogs. She’s happier than I’ve ever seen her.

She had a bath the day before yesterday. I think?

Give it another couple of weeks and I’m on a trajectory to become Jodie Foster in Nell. Yesterday for lunch I had a tub of salsa. For early dinner I had more salsa and some queso. Silverware can fuck itself; my utensils are hands and chips now. If you are what you eat, I am various southwestern dips. I am in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a great food town, and I am eating like a dumpster rat behind the Sprouts Market. I am using my own shirts to wipe snot from my kid’s face.

My dog and I are not on speaking terms. He knows what he did. But despite that, I feel like we’ve finally found our groove, and now it’s almost over.

My husband, child, dog, and I have been on the road for 23 days and are a couple days’ drive from home, which is being doused in torrential rain. It’s the time of year in southern California when everything good about the place is not accessible and everything bad about the place seems extra bad. I don’t particularly want to keep living out of a suitcase due to the fact that I’m not sure how much longer I can do this before whatever is behind it is diagnosable, but I don’t want to return to Los Angeles, where our house is full of possessions that require cleaning and organizing and maintenance and the whole city is wet and mad about it. I feel like the garbage dump lady from Labyrinth, weighed down by what I own.

I don’t actually need most of that stuff. I don’t actually need most stuff, period.

I wonder if it’s possible to send Marie Kondo into the house first, and ask her to rob us of everything that she doesn’t believe sparks joy. Her call. I trust her. I’ve been gone for so long that there are very few items I’d notice the absence of. Get rid of it. All of it.

Before we left, I tried my best to head off the dreaded Returning Home Blues. I tried to make it nice for when we would inevitably roll into our driveway. I cleaned every room, swept, mopped, disinfected the drains, changed the sheets, did all of the laundry, threw a bunch of things away, gave some other things away. I had the same trusted house and catsitter I’ve had look after my 18-year-old cat for the last few years drop in and out of the house and keep an eye on things. It’s a nice warm comfortable place to return to. Familiar places to sit and familiar pillows and a friendly front porch and the neighbors on all sides we get along with like gangbusters.

But I still feel depressed by the idea of being held in place by convention, routine, belongings, plans. I’ve been lucky to be the sort of professional who can work remotely and set my own schedule, and I’ve been lucky to have a partner who shares my drive to keep moving. I know that being able to nearly crisscross the country by car is an experience few get to enjoy at all, much less several times over in a span of only a few years. I just wish it could go on for a few more days.

When we return home, I’ll find reasons to be happy about it. Children need stability and routine; a life on the road can’t be good for a toddler. I sort of miss having more than one pair of casual shoes. I’m looking forward to cooking. And my cat will be happy about it. She tries to pretend she doesn’t care either way as long as she’s fed, but I know she’s always happy when we return.

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