In late 2009, I surprised myself by sobbing in my car on the way home from swimming one morning. I was in the U-Med District, on or near 36th Avenue as Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown” came on. I was in the habit those days of sipping hot yerba mate out of a particular white ceramic travel mug after swimming, and I remember the tea scent wafting through the car as I cried.
It was surprising because nothing was really wrong. But I felt like a lot was about to change, and as the Boss sang about this idea of home and I gazed out at the frosty December landscape of Anchorage, I realized that maybe my own concept of home was on the cusp of changing.
That night, a guy I’d met more than a year ago at an out-of-state conference was landing in Alaska to see me for the first time since we’d met. We’d been in touch over the last 12-plus months. No, not through social media but believe it or not, through handwritten, snail-mail letters. Ostensibly, we were German pen pals, trying to forge a remote connection while also practicing our shoddy Deutsch. But over time as the letters grew longer, with much more English, and little mailed trinkets, photographs and even mix CDs, it was clear that there was more potential in these letters and each of the authors behind them.
His return address was in Sparks, Nevada, adjacent to Reno. He had a daughter, age 8. It took me a year of writing and receiving letters to understand and eventually even warm to the idea of what it would mean to explore a relationship with him.
He shared my love of the outdoors. He worked for an organization in Nevada that stewarded and advocated for protection of public lands, Friends of Nevada Wilderness, and he was constantly on volunteer trips into Nevada’s backcountry over the weekends. He sent me a postcard once from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. He loved his daughter in a whole and sincere way that was both disarming and refreshing in the way that he described her with clear adoration and admiration for who she was as a person. And, he was funny and irreverent, sharing with me a wry humor and observation of the world that threaded curiosity and exploration with a healthy dose of black humor.
In one letter, he hand-drew Nevada plants in colored pencil on the margins of the last page, and said that he hoped I would write him back soon.
And, that morning while I did my usual routine of driving to the pool, changing into my suit, swimming laps, and getting back into the frozen car with my hot tea and playlist waiting for me, he was already on a plane heading north. We’d decided to “meet halfway,” meaning split the value of a ticket for him to come to Anchorage.
As I drove and cried, I felt a fullness that was pulling apart my own edges. I couldn’t predict what would happen when he landed, and that was scary. But, if all worked out, I knew I was setting myself on a path with significant change, including potentially leaving Alaska. After all, one of us would need to move in order to give a full-on relationship a go, and it would not be the one with the 8-year-old. I realized even then, dimly, that if I felt like something was there, I would need to make a major decision and give it my full heart.
It was jumping the gun a little bit because we hadn’t discussed any of this. We hadn’t even kissed. If he landed and things went south, there were plenty of hotels in Anchorage to put him up at. But enough was at stake in the year’s worth of letters and slowly growing relationship, with his flight on the way to Anchorage, that I would have been naive to ignore the realities.
He landed, and after the initial shock and awkwardness of spending time in real life with this person that I had only met that one time in real life, we pretty immediately clicked. In the weeks and months to come, the changes I had predicted began to more clearly be put into motion. It was easier, at that point, to comprehend because the tracks were already laid; I was just on them and moving forward in a logical and even exciting way. I cried surprisingly little, even as I eventually quit my job, put notice in to my landlord, and bought a one-way ticket for Reno.
In those final days leading up to my move, I spent a lot of time on the Coastal Trail in Anchorage. Not even running or biking, just going for very long solo walks and gazing out at the Inlet. I considered what it meant to be in Alaska, always a place I’ve considered to exist on an edge — an edge of the very world in how far north and how extreme it is; and even the edge of my sanity and capability in how those extremes push me to grow in ways I never considered. The Inlet itself carries edges, of floe ice in the winter and steep bluffs that descend sharply from along Point Woronzof and toward Kincaid Park.
It’s a view that is the same, and always changing. It comforted me to walk that route frequently, letting my mind and body inhabit what it meant to be making such a significant change in moving from Alaska to Reno, and soaking in all that my time in state had meant to me. I loved seeing how the Inlet never looked the same on any given two days, under light, weather and tides.
Fast forward to now. My husband and I lived in Reno for a few years. Then our circumstances changed and we ended up in Alaska. My wonderful, now-19 year-old stepdaughter visits during school breaks, holidays, and summer. We have been married and living here for almost 10 years.
We’re on the cusp of another change, and I find myself thinking again about edges. I haven’t had any distinct moments like the one in my car with Bruce to clearly mark this moment in time, because it’s taking longer and less distinct. But as we invest more in a phase of life marked by more geographic mobility, and as that moment gets closer to making the actual change, I do find myself crying more easily and frequently. It’s that similar feeling of fullness, and being pulled a little bit apart at my seams as I consider what I might be letting go in order to let something new in.