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We sat out on a covered balcony on Sunday evening. It was around 5pm, one of those summer evenings that was hot but could have been hotter. In the shade it felt nice: a sit-outside-and-drink-iced-tea kind of evening fading into night. Fading into night.

I sat as close as I could to my grandmother, all 82 pounds of her. So light, 82 pounds – the weight of a growing child. She seemed so small in the wheelchair, like a little one sitting in her daddy’s office chair. Her feet were clad in teal blue slippers with those non-slip bumps all around them, but the rest of her clothes were the clothes she had always worn: a plain skirt with a button-up sweater over some sort of blouse.

“Someone needs to water my flowers,” she said quietly, motioning towards the dying plant on the patio table, the plants that are not hers to water. “I would do it, but I’m just so tired.”

I leaned in closer, and she dropped her ear towards me, happy to receive.

“We came back early to see you,” I whisper-shouted into her ear.

“That’s okay,” she said, her weak voice coming out in a mumbling stream. “You can see me for a while yet.”

* * * * *

My dad feeds her ice cream. It is hard to speak to her, when my throat is one of those miserable lumps and my eyes keep welling up, so I let her squeeze my hand and I feel her fragile skin. She used to treat my hand when I was a sick child and she’d rub the bones so hard I eventually pulled them away with a yelp. But the power in her hands is gone, and I find myself wishing for the pain.

My voice still doesn’t want to work so I hold a cup of water up to her mouth and she drinks it like a bird. Then I move Chap-stick over her dry lips. I finally manage to speak, ask her if she would like something to eat. Some soup? Some applesauce? Some coffee? I try the coffee as a testament to its goodness. It’s sweet, I tell her, just as she always liked it.

She leans towards me.

“I don’t drink coffee anymore – they put my pills in it.”

I look questioningly at the mug. My dad laughs.

* * * * *

My dad talks to her in Pennsylvania Dutch, and she responds in brighter tones, as if something buried was coming alive. He asks her about her recent dreams, and she responds. I do not know this language. It is a strange combination of foreign and familiar to me.

Later my dad tells me what she said, that she has been dreaming a lot about her parents.

“I just get so tired of missing them,” she had said wistfully.

* * * * *

My dad had told me of their previous visit, how she took a small part of her skirt and folded it and moved it and folded it, over and over again. Finally my mom realized what she was doing: grandma was binding a quilt. She had done that practically her whole life, and in these days when her mind seems absent a fair amount of the time, it’s almost like her body goes back to what it remembers. So my mom handed her a piece of fabric, and she folded it and creased it and smoothed it, refolded it and creased it and smoothed it again. And again.

Her hands moved in a slow rhythm of life – there were years of history in those movements. She was a small girl, learning to quilt. She was a newly-wed, quilting for extra money. She was a new mom, a baby on the floor beside her. She was in her middle age, quilting for her business. She was a recent widow, quilting through her grief.

In that moment of imaginary quilting, she was not 92: she was 9 and 18 and 23 and 45 and 60. She was an entire life.

Perhaps this is why it is so important that we do not overlook the older ones among us: they are the embodiment of an entire life, and every age they have ever been is there for us to see, for us to bear witness to. They are years within years within years, layers of wisdom and experience, heartache and hope, death and life.

The veins and wrinkled skin and whispered memories form a topography, a stunning landscape, a map by which we who are so lost can hope to find our way.

I walked out of the bus after backing it into my parents’ driveway. Everyone else had already gone inside. Earlier that week, my dad had painted a message on a huge blue tarp and stretched it over the garage door:

“Welcome Home Willie and Kids. Love Ya.”

Across the street from my parents’ house, an Amish man slowly drove his horses through the field, gathering the loose hay into long piles. The machine made a soft clacking sound. The Amish man was expressionless, guiding the horses with small movements of the reigns – the most indiscernible motions completely changing their course.

* * * * *

It is difficult to know what to think right now. There are many strange paths the mind takes after finally returning home after a great adventure.

The last four months almost seem as if they never happened. Everything here seems exactly the same as when we left – the people, the places, the pace of life. It’s a strange thing, the way life continues on when you’re not around. Perhaps this is disconcerting because it reminds me that, when I die, this world will keep spinning.

But there is also the “what next?” element to think about. Now that we’ve done what we always wanted to do, what next? How do we move forward from here? How do we top this? How can we regroup?

* * * * *

Walking down into my parents’ basement gave me a very strange feeling. If you’ve read “Building a Life Out of Words,” then you know that we moved into this basement after ending up over $50,000 in debt. We moved in here, in late 2009, to get a fresh start.

And now we’re back. That can be a little disorienting. How did we end up back here again? Where do we go from here?

Then, as I walked into the basement bathroom, I saw a piece of paper glued to the mirror. It was something I had printed out and put up there almost three years ago, just after we had moved in. Just after my business had gone down the tubes. Just after I had decided to write for a living. This is what the paper said:

Patient endurance is what you need now, so you will continue to do God’s will – then you will receive all that He has promised. Hebrews 10:36

A message from my past, something that I had typed in 2009, speaking into my present.

Patient endurance.

That is what I need now.

Do not trouble your hearts overmuch with thought of the road tonight. Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them. (From Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings)

It’s Thursday afternoon as I write this, and it’s quiet and it’s hot. A few flies buzz around the door where the sun reaches in and scorches the bus’s black leather passenger seat. Maile and the kids fled to a small lakeside beach not far from where we are parked. Through the vents I can hear the A/C rush and roar but it cannot catch up.

The bus is messy, as it usually is at this time in the afternoon. An empty cereal box stands at leaning attention. A sippy cup, a styrofoam cup, a random shoe, a plastic deer, and a John Deere tractor clutter the floor under the table. The couch I’m sitting on holds a box of Legos, two of the kids’ backpacks, Maile’s purse, and a pile of homeschooling folders.

But soon it will all be over. By Saturday night we hope to have this bus parked in my parents’ driveway, and by Monday it will be cleaned out. We will probably never spend a night in it again. How strange.

Two weeks ago we were parked in a beautiful campground in South Dakota, wearing sweaters and coats. One month ago, Salinas, California, and we hadn’t yet lost our brakes. Five or six weeks ago, we were in windy Amarillo, a visit that seems to have taken place years in the past. Tulsa, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Sarasota, Gainesville, Orlando, Charlotte, Bremo Bluff – all seem like settings in a book I read, long ago.

Four months ago (or one week before we left on our trip), I could not have begun to envision the amazing people we were about to meet in person, or the awesomeness of the landscape, or the heart-in-mouth moments of stress, anger and fear. We’ve experienced things I never could have imagined.

* * * * *

This is an adventure: setting out to do something that doesn’t make sense, something for which you are not completely equipped, something that takes you into a place fraught with danger or uncertainty. This is true of changing professions or moving or writing a book. It is true of saying hello to a stranger or giving away money for which you had a very good use. There are many ways to embark on an adventure, and very few of them involve a big blue bus named Willie.

Also, this about adventures: there are many terrible things that can happen along the way, and many terrible things that WILL happen along the way, but the worst thing that could possibly happen is that you return unchanged.

* * * * *

We return from our adventure with very little to show for it – at least in a material sense. We have a good deal less money, not much work lined up, and for at least a few weeks we will be living with our parents. Again. By most measures used by this world, taking this trip was a mistake, and it has left us worse off than when we began.

Thankfully, there are other means with which to measure a life. Ones less arbitrary than the numbers on a bank statement.

I know my wife better than I did before. I now understand why she wanted to take the trip, something I didn’t know before we left. I have a better understanding of what she needs from me, and I understand (at least a little more) how I can provide her with that. I now see that she does put her right hand up over her chest while she reads something that moves her.

I’ve learned how much my children need me to be present for them. What a soft heart Cade has. Lucy’s yearning for affection. Abra’s enjoyment of a messy, crazy, moving life. How, when Sam watches the landscape go by, it tames his savage side. His “Red Rackham” side.

I’ve changed, too, but in less tangible ways, ways that I have trouble articulating. At least right now. Give me a few days. I’ll let you know.

* * * * *

It has been quite an adventure. I wish you knew how much I appreciated the fact that you took the time to join us, to read our posts, to comment, to encourage. The countless emails that I received from people who were inspired by our trip in turn inspired us to keep going. We didn’t always want to keep going. But we did.

So for now I say good-bye from the road. The next time we meet, I’ll be in my parent’s basement again. Full circle. Looking for writing work. Going to visit grandma. Taking my aunt for her chemo treatments, if she’ll have me. That’s another thing I’ve learned on this trip: I can have little adventures every day, if I’ll just get outside of myself for a minute.

In the words of JRR Tolkien, who penned perhaps the greatest adventure story ever written:

Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.

Finally, this:

Take an adventure. I can see it in your eyes. You could use one.

* * * * *

Photograph used with permission. Copyright Michelle Walls.

I remember climbing up on to the roof of Grandma’s house back in the mid-80s. I was eight or nine years old (the age of my oldest son now), and my teenage cousins reached down over the edge of the sandpaper-like asphalt shingles and pulled me up, scraping the skin off my stomach. I remember the giddy feeling of being so high, of looking down on the corn that usually looked down on me.

There was something raw and wild about being on a roof, and as the sun set we lay there on the shallow slope, our hands behind our heads, our feet braced to keep us from sliding off. Then, when all was dark, the fireworks launched into the night sky, their explosions thudding against my small rib cage like a defibrillator.

I was too young to wonder how my Grandma was feeling during those years after my Grandfather had died. Almost thirty years ago. I wonder if she cried herself to sleep, missing him, or lay awake at night worrying about how she would pay the mortgage. I wonder if she heard those fireworks exploding and wished he was back for one last Fourth of July, sitting out on their small deck, smelling the cut hay and watching the fireflies.

* * * * *

My Grandma, my father’s mother, has always loved us with a tough and indefatigable love. Her kisses are direct and non-negotiable, always followed by a few firm slaps on the cheek or a vice-grip pinch on that fatty area under your chin. She has been sort of bony for most of the years that I remember her, but not frail. Anything but frail.

Ironic then that this tough love has always been accompanied by a soft voice, kind eyes, and a clearly communicated message: your presence means the world to her. Her love, after one of those signature greetings, came in the form of iced tea or a hot dinner. When I walked into her house (or, in recent years, her room), her reaction was always the same.

“Well!” she said, as if you were presenting her, not with just your presence, but with a check for $1 million. “Shawn, Shawn, Shawn. Look who it is. How are you? How are you?” Her voice came out in a sing-song kind of cadence, perhaps from all of those years of singing in church or with her children.

* * * * *

The text I got from my parents last night was a wake up call. When they walked into her room, there was no overwhelming welcome. She sat, and when she spoke it was with a quiet, weak voice. But she is 92, and her body has endured much, and her mind struggles to make all of the connections.

When I heard that, I knew it was time to head home.

To be sure, she has pushed on through overwhelming odds before: heart surgery, multiple strokes, a recent bout of pneumonia. But she is 92, and she seems to be fading, and I want to be home with her and with my family. So we’re cutting our trip short by a week or so and heading home this Friday night: a 12-hour drive, and we should get home by Saturday night.

111 days down. Three to go. I hope we make it in time.

I am not very good at waiting.

When I was a kid, I ran everywhere. I ran out to get the mail and ran to answer the door and tried to run while pushing the lawn mower around the yard so I could finish and move on to the next thing. I ran to our neighbors if I had time to play and I tried to run down the halls in middle school. If mom or dad asked me to get something outside, I ran.

I so badly wanted to be THERE. Not HERE.

You know where I mean. That place out there. That place where I’m making more money than I am now. That place where I have a little bit of a nicer house than I do now. That place where I’m finally married or I finally have more kids or the kids have finally moved out.That place where all of my current problems are sorted out.

* * * * *

We’re prodded into this mindset by the atmosphere of our age. Every retailer can help you figure out a way to get what you want NOW instead of waiting until you can afford it. We can view Super Bowl commercials before they even air on television, and we read spoilers of our favorite shows before they take place. We buy things now and pay for them later. Young kids want to be teenagers, teenagers want to be adults, and adults want to be retired.

* * * * *

Yesterday I wrote about how this trip is helping me live more in the here and now. And it is. But all it takes is one bit of bad news, one unexpected disappointment, and suddenly the here and now isn’t good enough anymore. HERE isn’t good enough. I want to be THERE.

* * * * *

The word “wait” shows up in the New Living Translation of the Bible 79 times. That’s a lot of waiting. In one of those instances, Moses tells his people, “Stay here and wait for us until we come back to you.” But the Israelites simply couldn’t wait for Moses to return; they started feeling abandoned, so they created a god all their own. A lump of gold. And they worshiped it and they bowed down to it and they couldn’t get enough of it.

I read that story and I think to myself, How completely ridiculous – those Israelites sure had issues! And then I get to the place where I am tired of waiting and feel abandoned and I create my own little gods. When God doesn’t show up in my timing, I rush to put my hope in people or business plans or my own ingenuity, and soon I am clutching on to that thing like a golden calf, and I’m caressing it and maybe even calling it “My precious.”

That’s a little weird. But it’s what I do.

“Be still in the presence of the LORD, and wait patiently for him to act.” Psalm 37:7

Where should I wait? In his presence. To me, that’s a meditative place, a deliberate place, a place where I can hear my own breathing. And what should I do in that space?

Be still.

Wait patiently.

Stop running.

“Well, here we are,” I say as we pull the big blue bus into yet another Walmart parking lot, this one just outside of Urbana, Illinois. “Home sweet home.”

Maile smiles.

“I’m going to miss spending the night in Walmart parking lots,” she says.

As silly as that may sound, I know exactly what she means. There’s something nice about pulling into a mostly vacant parking lot, finding an out-of-the-way spot for the bus, turning on the generator, and falling asleep to the sound of its humming while a cool breeze whistles in through the screened window at the back of the bus. There’s something nice about the knowledge that the next day you’ll be on the road again, to a new destination a few hundred miles away, and that, once again, you’ll see things and places and people you’ve never seen before.

* * * * *

A kind of reflective peace has descended during these last few weeks of our trip. It’s as if our emotions have decided to mirror the landscape, going from mountainous, rugged and ever-changing to smooth and even. It feels kind of like one long sigh.

Now that home is in our sights, I find myself thinking back over the trip, marveling at the experience, hesitantly lifting rocks of thought and waiting to see what has grown there during the last three and half months, waiting to see what might scurry out. Perhaps a new take on my current life. A new direction. A new hope.

But even more often I find myself looking forward. What waits for us when we get back to Lancaster? What sort of work will I be able to find? Does my novel have a future? Will we write a book about our trip? Will I be able to survive the summer eating only sweet corn?

* * * * *

So many questions. I’m still working through a lot of things in my mind. Somehow, though, this adventure has (nearly) cured me of my need for answers. My need to know where the next project will come from or how I’ll make any money. My need to know if God will supply another runaway truck ramp just in time.

For perhaps the first time in my life, I am okay living in the here and now. Let me tell you: it’s a glorious feeling.