It’s approaching midnight, a quiet hour among the mass of transatlantic air travelers. I’ve finally settled in between sleeping Sarah and on-his-way-to-sleep Gideon. I’m unwinding and savoring doing so, after weeks of hectic preparation for this moment, for this trip. Setting out on such a lengthy and complex venture is doubly, really triply demanding. You, in this case we, have to finish up all the projects, tasks, and things – work, play, and life related — that you had underway, which includes tending to ongoing things, such as friendships requiring last face-to-face installments or at least farewells or even some failings leading to belated email apologies. You need to leave your life behind in order – the home, the bills, the finances (including an eleventh hour signing of redone wills), relationships, animals if they’re your thing. You must set up your life ahead on the road, a new life spanning countries and continents, requiring substantial research, ongoing and voluminous discussion (when you, as we, are collaborative), lots of acquisition, careful and often painstaking planning, and loads of logistical juggling, jigsaw puzzling, and internet legerdemain. All told, not one, not two, but three tall tasks. And, to boot, all this cuts across work life and school life, family life, and friend life. No wonder I have been feeling the weariness the last few days of proto-exhaustion. No wonder the hermeticism of the jet plane allows it (at least for now) wash out of me.

There are many ways, tangible and conceptual, to delineate the transition from our settled lives in New York to our peripatetic ones all over. Perhaps I will reflect on them. However more interesting some, probably most of them are, none feels more immediate, powerful, and real than the sense of relief and repose which has so gracefully, and precipitously followed on the days upon days, stretching on for months, of all that I and we did to bring about this moment.

–Danny, 15-16 July 2017