Girl Meets North: First Impressions

It’s cold here. In lots of ways.

And in other ways, it already feels completely normal.

My parents, my dog, my husband, and I arrived in Newport News, Virginia Friday, January 22, at around 2:00pm. The total travel time from Florida landed at about 20 hours, thanks to the 15-foot U-Haul that was towing Clayton’s SUV and the incessant rain along the east coast. I am not the world’s most easygoing passenger in general; add to that thunderstorms and a yacht on wheels, and I am basically impossible to keep in the passenger seat. Clayton kicked me out of the U-Haul and into my car, which my dad was driving, around hour 10. True story.

We completed some paperwork at our new apartment complex and successfully unloaded our embarrassing amount of boxes into our 730-square foot apartment. And then we wondered why on earth we would ever rent a 730-square foot apartment. So did Bryson. It’s clear that many boxes will remain unpacked and shoved along any free wall space that’s left (read: my 11 boxes of high school memorabilia. I was Valedictorian!). There’s not a great deal of organizational prowess displayed in how I arranged our crap; if you reach over the washing machine for the detergent, a box of varying-sized Corningware teetering atop a box of wedding photos may end up giving you a mild concussion. We’ll call that a fair warning for when YOU COME VISIT ME.

My parents must have known that saying goodbye pre-relocation just wasn’t an option. They braved our dinky new home for four days and helped us in every way two people could be helped – financially, logistically, mechanically, and emotionally. In between all of that, we managed to do a bit of exploring in colonial Williamsburg and Virginia Beach. I wanted these excursions to say, “Hey, lookie here. I’m not moving to the middle of nowhere. I’m moving into one of the United States’ historical gems where people like to dress up in petticoats and churn their own butter!” But instead, no one was that impressed with the sites in the dead of winter, and I fell even more in love with my parents than ever. Total backfire. There was a tearful goodbye at the airport on Monday night at 6:45pm that hasn’t completely ended. I haven’t fully come to terms with not being able to swing by my parents’ house on any given day or meet my mom for coffee on a random Friday afternoon. I know they haven’t either. But we’re working on it. And maybe in a couple of days I’ll be able to pick up the phone and have a real conversation from Virginia to Florida without that lump lodged in the back of my throat choking back anything I’d hoped to say. But for now, I’m sticking with texting.

Clayton and I have jumped right into house hunting. It’s a bit silly considering we just asked our credit card people to increase our credit limit and they rolled their eyes and laughed us off the phone. I can’t be sure because it was over the phone, but I’m pretty sure they flicked me off, too. But paychecks are imminent (for Clayton anyway) and we need something free to do during the day. Daydreaming of ceramic tile and granite countertops may be entirely psychologically damaging at this point, but it’s 100% free.

Being here is not nearly as unsettling as I’d imagined. Newport News feels like Tampa on a smaller scale. The city is urban and commercial. We have to drive everywhere. There are so many Starbucks that it’s even obnoxious to me. In the short time that we’ve been here, we’ve encountered more than a couple of drivers who were not too patient with our illegal u-turns and out-of-towner-slightly-below-speed-limit pace. We definitely drove right on past the Southern Hospitality and left it in the dust of our U-Haul a few states away from here.

I am determined to believe that one day it will be my home. It’s just not today.