The Point of Departure, Chapter 7: Sea to Sea

(Back to Chapter 1: The Straight and Narrow Path, Chapter 2: The Glass Tower, Chapter 3: The Decline and Fall of Me, Chapter 4: Fruitless, Chapter 5: The Long Walk and Chapter 6: Darrow)

My brother Stuart lived in New Jersey with his fiancée, but had flown to Los Angeles for the holidays. Together we packed my Honda Civic with everything it could hold, including our suitcases for the long drive ahead. Most of the possessions from my life at the Barrington Avenue apartment had to stay behind at my parents’ house (where many of them remain even now).

On Christmas morning I backed the Civic out of my parents’ garage. I had no friends waiting for me in Boston, and no certainty about what would come of this leap into the unknown. But I knew that I had taken full ownership of my life, and for the moment that was enough.

Just before we left, my brother and I snapped photos that now hang on a wall in my home: each of us gazing into the distance. I had never done anything as intentional or momentous as getting in that car and driving east into the rising sun.

Six or seven hours later we were in Las Vegas, where Stuart had an appointment with an event planner at the hotel where his wedding would take place a few months later. We arrived a little early, so to kill time we played a few machines in the casino and quickly won more than $300 between us. It seemed a good omen.

After the meeting we headed southeast, across the Hoover Dam into Arizona, and from there east for two thousand miles, stopping overnight in Albuquerque, Oklahoma City and Nashville. Stuart had brought along a tape of some music that was becoming very popular: Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill album. It became the soundtrack for the trip, and to this day when I hear any of the songs I find myself back on Interstate 40 with the United States flying past.

We could have reached Washington, DC late on the fourth night, but stopped instead in Front Royal, Virginia, site of a gigantic toxic waste site that had once been the world’s largest rayon factory. I had spent a lot of time in town and on the factory site as an attorney working on a huge insurance coverage lawsuit, and it seemed appropriate to pay a visit (and show Stuart) on my way to the rest of my life.

In DC we met up with Stuart’s fiancée Cheryl and relaxed for a while. The following morning, the three of us headed for Boston in two cars, stopping at their home in New Jersey and in Connecticut for dinner. When we finally reached Boston at midnight, we made a quick stop at my new apartment, a studio on the fourth floor of a Back Bay brownstone. As we stood there in the darkness, the empty room looked about half the size it had seemed when I had seen it the first time. It took me a long time to get to sleep in my hotel room that night. I felt intimidated by the amazing view of the snow-covered city through the window--a city in which I had no friends, and in which I would be spending a lot of time by myself.

The three of us moved everything from my car up the stairs into my apartment the next day. It was New Year’s Eve, and we spent the night in a hotel room watching videos and talking about the future. On New Year’s Day 1996, Stuart and Cheryl bid their farewells and drove away. Alone in my chilly apartment, I started to unpack my belongings, reflecting on the long road behind me and daydreaming about the long road still ahead.