The Big Move: It’s Really Happening!

Blog # 8

My Toyota Camry and I made the trip down to Florida on an Amtrak train before my little dog made the journey. I needed to get my car down to my new town, and I didn’t want to do the 16.5-hour drive by myself. My plan was to bring the car down on the train, spend a few days setting up my new house, and then fly back to get Lex for a quick airplane ride to his new home.

It was July 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic that still was not abating, and it was my first time on the infamous auto train from Virginia to Florida. I had a private “roomette” with customized room service set up to decrease contact between passengers.

I got to pre-order my dinner as well as breakfast from a daily menu and have it brought to me on a tray by a cordial, masked steward, who also folded down my bunk bed for me before sleeping time and then returned it to upright seating for breakfast in the morning. Very nice service — and I had no contact with anyone else, which was reassuring during this scary time. We left Lorton, VA, at 4 p.m. and the next day arrived in Sanford, FL, at 9 a.m.

So, I was really doing this! It was happening — I was moving across many states to my brand-new life. Peering out from my bunk window, I could see the miles of countryside pass behind me as we headed south and I got further and further away from a part of the country that I had lived in for … wow, was it 33 years now?

I had arrived in Maryland in 1987 after journalism grad school in Champaign, IL, and a childhood in the Chicago area. After a few years I moved to Washington, DC, and then northern Virginia, where I got married and raised my three kids. Now after what seemed like a lifetime, I was leaving that part of the country for warmer pastures.

When the train pulled into the station in Florida the next morning, I deboarded and then had to wait a while for my Camry to be pulled out of one of the auto cars and driven down a ramp to the pickup area. And then I was back behind the wheel of my pack-in car and ready for my three-hour drive from the Orlando suburbs to my new home!

I got lost a few times trying to find my way to the southeast coast of Florida, but I also got to see many different areas, neighborhoods, and roads of this new state. The presidential election race was just starting to be in full force, and I looked out my window anxiously as I drove through this notoriously “red” state, hoping to spot Biden-Harris signs on my journey.

When I had researched areas to live in during my initial online exploration of Florida, I discovered that the southeast part of the state was the most liberal, where more people voted Democratic than anything else in every election. I hoped to be surrounded by other progressives in my new city, but there was no way to know for sure how it would go.

Many people asked me, when I told them of my plans to move to this part of Florida: “How can you move somewhere where you know nobody?!” And it’s true, that other than the friendly real estate agent who sold me my new house and lived in the community herself (and was recruiting me to play pickleball with her group!), I didn’t know a soul in Palm Beach County.

I do have family in Florida: My sister and her husband and two teenagers live in a suburb of Orlando (for now — they plan to move back to Chicago someday), my niece and her husband live in Orlando, and I have an aunt and uncle in Naples and more relatives in Fort Meyers. But those are all more conservative areas of the state. I wanted to live by people who were more like me — who wanted to get Donald Trump out of office and who cared about progressive causes. So I guess I was looking for my people.

As I headed from Orlando that hot July day to my ultimate destination, I counted three Trump bumper stickers on pickup trucks in traffic, and I cursed to myself. I did not see anything for Biden until I got close to Boynton Beach, my new city. There was one lone Biden sign in front of a small house. Yes!

I would discover that it would be a while before people started putting out a lot of political signs as we got closer to November 3rd, but for now, it was a start.

I arrived at my new community, Tuscany Bay, about an hour later than I had planned, but there was no set schedule. I was on my own solitary timeline. My plan was to unload everything from my car, bring in the new rugs that were waiting for me in boxes outside my front door, do a little shopping for essentials (including a new vacuum cleaner), and start setting up my new house for my new life.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it — it was definitely difficult to do this all by myself. I am under 5 feet tall and I had to drag the huge boxes inside the house and get the rugs out of them. I moved heavy furniture around to rearrange the rooms and also to get the rugs in place. I hurt my lower back, where I have some arthritis, more than once. It was not easy setting up house all alone. In the past, I always had my husband. And later, when I moved to my apartments, I also had my sons to help me. But I could do this — I was determined.

When it came time to assemble a desk and patio furniture, hang pictures, and fix some things not working right, I would hire the handyman that my realtor had recommended for me. But for this trip, I was on my own.

After two days of puttering around, filling the kitchen cabinets, and rearranging things throughout the villa, I was done with what I could do by myself. I set up a dog bed and a basket of chew toys and balls for Lex. I took some photos of the rooms, the lanai, and the outside landscaping to show family and friends, and then I closed up the house. I was ready to fly back to Virginia to say good-bye to my kids and to fetch Lex, who they were taking care of, and bring him to his new home.

Back in Northern Virginia, with help from my son Lucas, I worked on emptying out my apartment, getting rid of a few old pieces of furniture (we carried them down to the building’s loading dock and trash area), cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, and vacuuming the carpet. I sold my standalone kitchen pantry to someone moving into the building; everybody needed one for the kitchens there, because cabinet space was sparse. I wouldn’t need it in Florida, where my new kitchen had plenty of cabinets.

The last step was to bring my few remaining pieces of furniture to the garage at the family house, earmarked for both of my boys. Lucas was going to take some of the furniture stored there for his college apartment in Blacksburg, and his older brother, Jacob, planned to get his own place once he secured his first post-college job. He was undergoing a security clearance from the federal government for a computer programming job with a government contracting company. My daughter, Rachel, was about to start her freshman year at Virginia Tech, where Lucas would be a senior. Everybody was moving on.

I had one more night in Virginia, and after bringing a few things over to the house (including my snow shovels and car scrapers, which I would have no use for in Florida), I had to say good-bye to the kids and pick up my dog. Lex and I were going to spend the night at a hotel next to the D.C. airport before flying out early the next morning for Palm Beach.

The night before, I had started getting stomach pains, and that would continue for a week. As I stood in the front hall of the house I had lived in and where I’d raised my kids for 20 years, I hugged the three of them, one at a time, and tried not to cry. My stomach was clenching and I was afraid I was going to break down. It wouldn’t be long before I would see them again — I planned to fly to Blacksburg the next month to help Rachel shop and move into her college dorm and to see Lucas’s new apartment. And on Labor Day weekend, Jacob would fly to Florida to spend the long weekend with me.

But for that moment, I was fighting emotions and trying to be upbeat and put on a cheerful face. Leaving my kids was the hardest part of this journey. Some people were aghast that I was going to do it. I felt guilt and sadness. It was definitely a mixed bag of emotions I was carrying.

But I knew it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. My kids would all be about two hours away from me by plane. They were going to be out of this house soon anyway — two at college and one in a post-college apartment. They were now 23, 21, and 18. I knew that by getting a place by the ocean, I would be guaranteed lots of visits — including during winter and spring breaks from college. Plus, all three of them adored Lex and would want to come see him (along with their old mom), so that was another selling point. It would all be fine.

My head knew this, but my stomach still wasn’t getting it. I had to work through the swirling in my gut, smile through my tinge of regret, and tightly hug my kids good-bye. I walked Lex out to the car and slid him into his travel carrier. We were on our way to the airport hotel, and soon we would be in the air heading to Florida.

My stomach pains would eventually go away. My excitement about my new home would grow. I was ready for this big transition. And I would soon be a new Floridian in my villa surrounded by palm trees.

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Jenny and Lex

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