There’s a stretch of Route 24 East, near the Morristown Municipal Airport, where I’m often the only car on the road driving to play organ at a church early on Sunday mornings.  The long straightaway makes me think about the solitude of being in a tiny car on a giant highway.  Some mornings, I’ve imagined passing exit 8 and just going straight to see where the road takes me. 

I made a hard decision to leave this church job and telling people I’ve loved working with weighed heavily on me.  The evening that I would share this news, my stomach felt queasy and my heart rate accelerated a little.  The future without this place to go on Sunday mornings would transformed into something new.  As I was drove down that stretch of road leading to the church, a song popped into my mind.  Through the magic of technology, I said the song title out loud and the music began playing.

Along with the opening guitar strums of the Traveling Wilburys came thoughts of my mother.  Good ol’ Marie loved those guys and I bet part of the appeal was that some of them were around her age.  They got together and did a new thing in their 40s and she also did a new thing.  She’d left my dad, went back to school, and had a new career as a nurse.

I’d planned to write many blog posts this year, in 2025, because of the anniversaries I’ve observed, among them, the anniversary of my mother’s passing in 2000. 

What Would Marie Do is often in my mind, especially as I’m approaching the age she was when she died (54).  I’ve never responded well to being told what to do, nor was Marie big on giving advice.  She was someone who endorsed the (sometimes hare-brained) decisions I’d made for myself.  Whether it meant leaving relationships, jobs, or moving away.  What I know for certain is that she also knew when leaving a situation was the right thing to do, even when it was painful. 

She had a stained-glass decoration that hung in the window over the kitchen sink in several of the apartments we lived in.  It said, “when one door closes, another one opens” and even though she had a lot of hard times, I think she tried to lean into the hope that things would be better on the other side. 

We endured many changes as a family during my teenage years and as a result, I grew into someone who moved around a lot – changed colleges and jobs, moved to other states and other apartments.  Twenty-five years ago, I moved to New Jersey, a state where I also wandered endlessly before until I examined my need to keep leaving things.  Something must have clicked in me in the last decade because I’m not constantly planning exit strategies anymore.  It’s a relief that it’s been over five years since I’ve had to deal with those obnoxious yellow change-of-address stickers and I have no plans to do so anytime soon. 

I’ve learned to slow down and make more intentional decisions so I can settle in and not run around anymore.  There’s a peace in the stability I’ve experienced that was truly lacking for a large chunk of my adolescence and adulthood.  But a commitment to staying put just for the sake of avoiding a tough goodbye isn’t healthy either. 

Making a decision to change things up isn’t the end of the line for me.  It’s unknown what possibilities will come from not having anywhere to consistently be on weekends anymore.  Maybe I’ll get to see what it’s like to get up early on Sunday morning, with my family in tow, and pass exit 8 to see where it leads. 

Sidebar comment about this photo. My husband and I made a decision to buy a home in a specific town in 2020. I’d been taking some professional courses that met in a psychologist’s office in this town and stopped in Walmart before class that day. When I saw this in a car in the parking lot, I knew moving to this town was meant to be.