The text arrived while I was sitting on the couch, hunched over my laptop, working on one analysis or another for my dissertation lab. “What if, instead of me coming home, you came and met me here and we just kept driving south?” it read.
Jordan had texted me from Zihuatenejo, Mexico, where she was spending a brief vacation with her sister and another friend, Robin. She was entertaining an offer from yet another bank, seeking to draw her back into the world of late nights, early mornings and constant stress and competition that defines so much of finance. I was toiling through the seemingly interminable slog that defines graduate school, seeking to finish a PhD in systems biology that I had started for reasons I have long forgotten.
I’m getting my passport now.
“I’m getting my passport now,” I texted back and immediately got off the couch to do just that. I was ready to walk away from grad school right then. Just as Jordan was emotionally and psychologically finished with finance, I was done with grad school. Burned out, exhausted, sour with the taste of defeat.
In the end, Jordan returned to Brooklyn and I stuck out grad school to the bitter end. But that emotional flurry of cross-border texting planted the seed for what would become our decision to drive the Panamerican Highway, from NYC to Ushuaia, the southernmost city that one can drive to in South America. We needed an adventure, were both ready for change, but rather than drop everything and walk away, burning bridges as we went, we opted for a more measured, better-planned approach.
This was a shot in my arm for setting a concrete date to defend my thesis. It was a goal that Jordan could work towards, something to provide a sense of purpose behind her daily work. In the months that followed, I convinced my thesis committee to set a date for the defense and began a feverish and sleep-deprived three-month sprint to the finish. Jordan, working from home, took charge of most of the planning, especially as my defense date grew closer, and I became ever less capable of thinking of or talking about anything unrelated to my dissertation.
Having decided to put as little as necessary into storage, we began the process of purging ourselves of all unneeded and unwanted possessions. I began with books. At a glance, I pulled a dozen or so off the shelves, with which I could easily bear to part. Then I found a few more. The more that I pulled from the shelves, the easier it became. I felt like I was growing lighter. We started putting things up on craigslist — kitchen supplies, pieces of my homebrewing kit, and other random household items. First little things, then bigger ones and then more of everything.
We set out a giant bag in the bedroom and added things to it that we hadn’t used in a year or so and likely wouldn’t use for another year. When it was full, we sorted the contents and decided how to get rid of them.
We made several trips to the Goodwill in downtown Brooklyn, depositing a small avalanche of clothes and other items. We held a stoop sale. Neighbors we had never actually met stopped by and talked to us for a while as though we were all old friends. The next day, most of them went back to blanking us on the street. Oh New York, so friendly, so distant.
Alongside this steadily flowing purge, I worked to write my dissertation and finish a few other remaining tasks in the lab. Days blurred into snapshots of writing, cleaning, coding, meeting craigslist buyers, complaining when they flaked out (so many flaked out) and meeting up with people for drinks because our days in Brooklyn were numbered.
The day of the defense finally arrived. As a parting gift, and because we were changing our residencies to Texas, my lab bought me a shirt with the outline of Texas, covered with a giant scribble. Below that graphic, it read “Texas got messed with.”
The shirt was a useful gift, as I sweat right through the one that I wore to the defense. Not all of my committee members felt convinced that my project was really complete, but, after six years, I couldn’t go on with it anymore. Besides, Jordan and I were leaving no matter what. I basically strong-armed them into giving me a “Pass With Revisions”. The revisions were minor. The only thing that mattered in the end was the word “pass”. I was officially a doctor, which meant that we could finally leave.
Pass With Revisions
The lease on our apartment expired one week after the defense, so we had just that long to finish packing and hit the road. That week was a mad blur of packing and farewell drinks. Being the island at the center of the world, a lot of people pass through New York City, a flow of travelers as constant as the blood through our veins. This trend didn’t stop just because we were leaving.
A friend came in from Mexico City, another from Alaska, and a couple passed through from Dubai. We were excited to see everyone, to have one final hurrah in the city that we had made our home. Aside from visitors, there were so many of our local friends, without whom we never could have felt at home, to toast on our final nights in Brooklyn.
It was a week of last last calls, final farewells, and of getting in those last conversations. Nothing was really the last, of course, nothing was really final. We still expect to see people again, but a trip that lasts over a year carries some weight. We could feel that weight over that last week. The weight of years of Burns Suppers, of weddings and births, of funerals, of guys’ nights and ladies’ nights, of every moment in which we had each others’ backs for one reason or another and all the times we had been over-served together.
“Empire State of Mind”
The week went by so fast we barely had time to register all that was happening. On the last day, as we packed the trailer and our car while cleaning up the apartment, we turned on “Empire State of Mind” to start off our packing soundtrack. As Jay-Z sang about the city of eight million stories and Alicia Keys told us how the lights of the city would inspire us, I breathed in a sigh that turned into a sob.
This was it. We were about to do this. We weren’t saying goodbye forever to anybody, but the next time we see everyone, this beautiful group, things will be different. There’s nothing bad about change, of course, we’re embracing it. But as Alicia and Jay-Z sang New York praises in the background, it suddenly felt so big and so sudden.
And so we embarked on the new adventure, one that promises to be just as exciting and beautiful as our New York chapter, but different in so many unpredictable ways. One cannot stand still and one cannot pursue adventure without leaving behind home and all the comforts found therein. Our loaded vehicle rumbled across the Verrazano, the U-Haul trailer tugging it backwards like the city pulled at our hearts, saying don’t go yet, I have more to show you.
The world has more to show us and through this blog, we hope to share it with you.