Back to the Future
July 2024 || Traveling through what is, what was, and what's to come.
Hello there! This is My Pen in the Air: a newsletter from the desk of an unexpected novelist filled with inspired endeavors and monthly updates on the creative life. Every post is free for all readers, but should you wish to further support my work, you can do so for less than one mocha a month! // Join me here:
Hello from I-40 West!
If you’re reading this at the time of publishing, I should be — if all goes according to plan — through Knoxville, Tennessee, about to climb westward over the Cumberland Plateau with just a couple hundred miles and far fewer hours left until we’re home.
I’ve capped off the last third of the month on a whirlwind tour of the mid-Atlantic, solo with the kids while Cliff held down our freshly re-roofed fort, worked, and kept Jasper company. This means, over the course of nine days we’ve driven more than seventeen hundred miles and thirty hours through six states, visiting with fourteen family members, two soon-to-be family members, three old friends, three friendly dogs, and three cats who weren’t entirely sure of us.
That’s certainly one way to wrap up a month!
When the idea for this adventure hatched at the beginning of the month, what I didn’t expect was just how like time travel our journey would feel. Very much in the present, we plunged into my past and the people and places that shaped it. Precariously, our departure was such that we spent a lot of our windshield time, the four of us who’ve spent so much of the last four school years together, contemplating and reimagining our soon-coming future full of both expected and sudden change.
It was about Fredericksburg, Virginia that it hit me, headed northbound on I-95, the headache-inducing Capital Beltway looming ahead. To the kids, I pointed out the Cracker Barrel my parents traded hands, passing me and my bags between them one afternoon in early summer, days in suburban Maryland on the horizon. A couple months later, we’d find ourselves back there again and school in Virginia Beach about to begin. Every year, the meeting place changed, but always the same roads. Always the same feelings. Sometimes, chicken and dumplings.
Those moments, passing the exit signs for Stafford and then Aquia, Quantico and Tysons Corner, it was like life in reverse. “There’s nothing about this drive I don’t remember,” I said to the kids, quietly, “but it’s been decades since I made it in the summer.” Long before I had kids of my own to make it with. And long before I learned to belong to and live in this season, as much as every other.
This month, I felt like an island. Or rather, like I was in a back float in the middle of a lake, unsure from one moment to the next whether that filled me with dread or delight — or both.
Some moments, the sky shouted in sun without a trace of cloud, and the shore lay a thousand miles away. I was breathless, my arms burned with fatigue, but still I trusted my body to keep me afloat long enough to find whatever it was I needed inside of me to turn over, to keep swimming, to make it to land — presuming that’s where I was supposed to be.
Other moments, great mountains of grey and white textured the view above me and I reveled in the stillness, sensed the slight bob and dip of my frame in the water as I inhaled, exhaled. There was nowhere to be, nothing to do. Not then, at least. Nothing but those stolen bits of calm and quiet so sorely needed after the first half of this year.
And in all of the moments and in between, there was buoyancy.
The same buoyancy that bolstered the bravery I needed:
to plan and then to make this kind of a trip in the first place
to say yes to a new path full of uncertainty this coming school year
to know what’s coming brings not only fear and sadness, but gladness too
to loosen my grip just enough behind the wheel of life to breathe a little
to model what it is to give space for what has been and hope for what can be
And to be right where I am. In the present. Back to the future.
A Linky List of Things I’ve Loved in July
Speaking of Marty McFly, this performance was everything:
JoJo Moyes is now writing on Substack, and I’m not gonna lie, she read my mail with this piece on why we don’t write. As I prepare for my home educating load to lighten by two-thirds, I’m yet again re-evaluating how to make the novel work… work.
In the middle of purging and reorganizing cabinets, I found a long-lost, pocket-sized bottle of one of my absolute favorite fragrances. If you’re a citrus fan, this unisex scent is… heavenly. I bought it while doing research for and drafting With You Everywhere, and now that I’ve been wearing it almost every day since and have fallen in love with it all over again, naturally, I can’t get my mind off the story. Not a bad thing!
I really enjoyed
’s piece “Know your creative cycle.” It got me thinking a lot about how July, every single year, is a month of little harvest in my creative life, but rather, hidden sowing. I know the deep work with traction will come back, and when it does, I’ll be ready. And who knows what fruit the aimless sketching with your kids’ travel art supplies will one day bring?
Opening up
’s don’t trust the alogrithm (dta) playlists each Friday has become one of my favorite weekly rituals. There’s something thrilling to me about a real human taking time each week to build a thematic playlist that I get to enjoy, like the good old days. “sweet tooth” has been my go-to mood boost, this month!It’s not “linky,” but I’d be remiss not to share one of my favorite candids from one of my favorite days ever with my favorite human, whom I married seventeen years ago this month. He’s the best partner in this wild and beautiful life, and I’m so thankful he’s mine.
The next month will be fairly uncharted territory for our crew on the back-to-school front, so all your thoughts, prayers, and well-wishes for a smooth transition are greatly appreciated.
I’m sure I’ll be writing, just not sure when and where, exactly, while I intend to soak up the last couple of weeks of life as we’ve known it, for now.
Wherever this end of July finds you, I hope August treats you kindly.
Thank you for reading!
Until next time,
I love that you did this, and I know it was an undertaking so kudos!!! The kids will never forget the memories made. And.... very much appreciating the linky links too :)
Love that picture of you and your hubby! We hit sixteen years next month.