From Here to There and Back Again

So what is the justification for shamelessly plagiarizing the title of Bilbo Baggins’ epic saga? It was the best heading I could come up with for writing about the denouement of the craziness that started last fall when we sold our house and kicked off this whole nomadic craziness. Many members of my imaginarily massive readership are under the misconception that I’m currently in Idaho staring at mountains and enjoying the sounds of nature. However, most of my actual readers know that I am in Sioux Falls staring at downtown buildings and listening to sirens, trains, and the throaty rumble of Sturgis Rally refugees. Some people even know why this recent nomadic transition has taken place. For the rest of you, I am about to explain.

The plan, if one can call our current transient lunacy by such a vaunted term, was to sell the house on Lewis last fall and travel around the universe for a few months camping out at the homes of family and friends.  Then, when it was available this summer, we would move into a condominium in Sioux Falls owned by our son and daughter-in-law.  Unlike most plans of mice and men, this one actually worked.  We are now the model residents, if somewhat migratory, of a third-story condominium in downtown Sioux Falls.

We arrived in Sioux Falls on the first of August following a glorious road trip from Northern Idaho.  My wife and I agree that there is nothing like the feel of the highway rolling under the wheels of our trusty Equinox. I rejoice in its incomparability, but she says that a root canal comes close to matching her experience. 

When we got to town, our first stop was the property management company that oversees our children’s condo, collects our rent, and now fixes our toilet. After nearly thirty years of home ownership, the idea of just calling someone to come to fix things is a foretaste of heaven. At the office, we were equipped with keys, a garage door opener, and a large helping of praise for our son and daughter-in-law. We’ll let you guess which of these we treasured most.

Our next stop was the Condo itself. Some readers may know that we had already spent a year living in this apartment when we first moved to Sioux Falls in 2008. So the ride up the elevator to the third floor was a little like coming home. The door key worked splendidly, and we entered the familiarly beautiful loft apartment with walls and walls of windows overlooking some main thoroughfares in downtown Sioux Falls. Naturally, the apartment was devoid of furniture since all of our things were still in storage across town. That situation was about to change radically.

We stayed the night in the condo, sleeping on an air mattress that blew itself up and then deflated itself on command the next morning. Who needs magic when a Walmart stands so close at hand? As I drove to the storage unit to meet our movers, I discovered the true meaning of being disoriented. After nearly eleven years of living in southeast Sioux Falls, traveling anywhere from downtown is an exercise in mental logistics. Now I feel like I’m on the wrong end of every street. My wife keeps insisting that we are further from everything than we were when we lived on South Lewis. By definition, downtown should be relatively closer to everything, but according to her, such logic is illusionary, especially since she knows better. So I use the universal key to detente, “Yes, dear.”

Upon arriving at the storage unit, I made a momentous decision, which I confirmed by phone with my wife. We had planned just to have the movers transport our large furniture, and then we’d bring the boxes piecemeal by car later. But after looking through the apartment, I concluded that everything could go in one trip and still leave us room to breathe. I gulped a little when the sweaty, exhausted movers handed me a bill that was roughly double the numbers I had originally anticipated. However, it is some of the best money that I’ve ever spent. Our stuff was in one place. True, the only real breathing space was the upper 4 feet of our lofted apartment, but breathing is overrated anyway.

The next day we starred in our own movie entitled Downsizing II. The original movie, Downsizing, took place last fall as we sorted through our life’s accumulation with both chagrin and nostalgia. Chagrin was helpful because it is easy to throw away stuff that you’re embarrassed you ever kept. Nostalgia is a whole different story.  Nostalgia can fill entire warehouses with no longer useful items. As my wife and I began to tackle the boxes that filled our new digs, we knew that nostalgia was the villain. So we decided to make the Downsizing sequel into an action film. Our little Equinox can now drive itself to the donation drop-off. A week’s worth of soul-searching work saw the apartment emptied of its extraneous inventory. Pictures were on the wall, and we were at liberty to simply live in downtown Sioux Falls.

Now naturally, this should be the end of the episode, but as Bilbo Baggins says, “adventures are nasty disturbing uncomfortable things that make you late for dinner.”  Our adventure continues as we got the apartment set up just in time to head back to North Idaho. This was not a momentary impulse but a part of the plan from the beginning. The Sioux Falls condo is now our home base. August was the month we dedicated to getting it arranged. But as the term “home base” implies, travel away from home base is always in the offing, or we would not append “base” to “home.”

Now my wife’s chief concern is to figure out how to lay out suitcases without overly disturbing the clutter-free ambiance we worked so hard to achieve in the condo. I’m looking up regulations for hunting upland game in Idaho, where we’re headed next. We’ll let you guess who’s responsible for the impending change in venue. Together we form the dynamics of our nomadic lifestyle. She’s always yearning for home, which is an actual place, now that our nine-month self-inflicted exile from Sioux Falls is complete. I am always headed somewhere, which includes most points of the compass. But now we agree that the center of gravity for us is here in South Dakota.