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“It’s a nice size,” he tells me. “It’s big enough to have lots of job opportunities, and it’s smaller than Portland, so we won’t have to struggle as much. Plus,” he adds, “there’s three colleges. I know you want to go back to school. Here’s your chance.”
Yes, it’s my chance. And I’m going to take it. I don’t have a specific career or major in mind, but I know that it’s one of the steps people take to be successful. It’s too hard, I realize now, to find happiness and fulfillment when we’re just struggling to get by. The servers I’ve worked with who were students had so much more hope than those who weren’t. They were working toward something, pursing something greater. That’s what I want for us.
Outside the Grand Am, billboards and exit signs are flashing by. I guess we’re sticking to the interstate. I should suggest that we get off and take the back roads, but I just want to get there, and this is the fastest way. Adventures and experiences used to mean so much to me, but now, more than anything, I just want to get to where we’re going and start working toward what we want.
So instead of looking out the window at the changing landscape around me, I focus my attention on the big plastic jar of jelly beans we bought for the trip at a food warehouse outlet. There must be a thousand jelly beans in here. I open and test each of the twenty different flavors, and as we drive through the mountains, I prepare little recipes. My favorite is the berry smoothie, with one strawberry daiquiri, one raspberry and one blueberry. Scott likes the tiramisu recipe, which calls for two cappuccinos, one cream soda, and one chocolate pudding. The next day, when we hit the prairies, we put the jelly beans away, but soon they’re back out and we’re both popping our favorites. By the time we hit North Dakota, only the cantaloupe, banana and buttered popcorn flavors are left, and when we stop at the next gas station, I throw the rest away in disgust. I don’t ever want to see a jelly bean again.
We stay on the interstate and head into Fargo. The self-storage is up ahead on the right. Scott pulls the U-Haul in and parks in front of our unit.
“It’ll be nice to not have to pay rent on this anymore,” Scott says, unlocking the unit with the key he’s carried around for the past year. He slides the rolling door up and reveals the remnants of our lives in Moorhead. Boxes stacked between an old bed and a kitchen table. We load it all into our U-Haul, which has enough room for everything except the dresser and one box. I put the box at my feet in the front cab and we leave the dresser in the parking lot with a “FREE” sign on it.
Duluth
We hit the Duluth outskirts at ten o’clock. There’s a nice motel right off the highway, and while we could go looking for a cheaper place, neither of us feel like driving around, pulling a trailer in the dark. Besides, this hotel has a steakhouse attached to it, and we’re starving. We check in, freshen up, and head to the restaurant, where we’re seated at a small booth.
“Well,” I say, holding up my hard lemonade for a toast, “Here’s to us.”
Scott raises his margarita. “Yes.”
“I mean, at least we’re doing stuff, you know?”
Scott agrees. “I don’t know anyone who moves halfway across the country twice in one year.”
“Because we have to follow our hearts, right? We have to do what’s right for us. It wasn’t working out, so we left. We’re not going to sit back and complacently accept unhappiness. We’re in charge of our fate.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think we should tempt fate like that again.”
I smile. “We won’t. We’re going to do things right. I’m going to go to school and find something that I love, and then we’ll have real opportunities.”
The excitement I have about the future is paired with a confidence that we can do anything we set our minds to. If we just moved to Portland with nothing, survived, and made it back alive, then we can do anything! That night, we fall asleep with smiles on our faces, happy to have one adventure over with and excited for the next one to begin.
In the morning, we move to a cheaper motel and walk over to the Embers restaurant next door for breakfast. Scott lays a Duluth News Tribune on the table and we scan the classifieds, circling all the possible places to live. We’d like a two-bedroom so that we can have a computer/guestroom, but other than that we’re pretty open. We just need it to be affordable. Most of the two-bedrooms are around the same price, and the descriptions all sound alike: “two bedroom apartment, off-street parking, utilities included.” Scott goes into the restaurant’s entryway to make some calls and comes back to the table with a list of appointments.
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