There was a stretch of weeks after the house went up for sale when everything felt suspended. The initial traffic through the house was scarce, almost nonexistent, and we weren’t really sure if that meant we shouldn’t be selling at all or if it just was what it was—a housing marketing slowing down at a time when sellers were no longer on top. For the most part, nothing changed. While I had gone through some closets and began an initial purge of things we wouldn’t be keeping, that was all I had done. No boxes lined the walls, our routine remained intact, and time marched on.
By now, it was summer. June in Indiana can be unpredictable, cooler, warm, hot, it’s hard to predict. But one thing that my girls and I did regardless was to take our Pomsky on a walk. During the evenings, mostly, when the air would settle and the late summer evenings would cast shades of pink and purple across the Indiana sky. These strolls were more than my teenagers trudging after me while we gave the dog exercise; it was their time to chat about whatever was on their mind. In a natural way, those walks became the perfect time for imagining something new.
Those walks quickly morphed into the place and time when dreams and plans for Europe first took shape.
It started simply, with the girls asking what it might look like to live somewhere across the ocean. What the streets would feel like. Whether the houses would look different. If the bookstores would smell the same. They asked about trains and castles and Christmas markets, about accents and foods, about the kinds of adventures we might find if we were brave enough to go. Would it feel different to live somewhere outside of the States? Would it be scary? What would it be like to see chateaus and the Eiffel Tower and Stonehenge?
Some answers we had—the internet is sometimes a beautiful thing—but many we didn’t. Not real ones. But we had possibilities. And sometimes possibilities are enough to start building a future.
We talked about the places we’d want to see first. The filming locations they’d recognize from their favorite shows. The bookish corners I’d want to explore. The small towns that felt like they belonged in a story. We imagined walking through cobblestone streets with no rush, no hurry, enjoying the feeling and adventure of being somewhere new and letting it unfold around us.
Those conversations didn’t feel like planning just yet. It was more daydreaming, a feeling that possibilities I never dared to believe could happen were on their way. Those walks to the park, sitting on the swings with dog beside us, our feet dangling and familiar cars passing by, in their own quiet way, became the foundation of everything that came next.
Looking back, I think that’s when the idea of Europe morphed from being a distant thought and something I had been watching on YouTube to becoming more real. It stopped being, "Oh, we’ll travel there and then come back to everything we know" to something we could picture being a future. Something we could move toward.
The combination of a growing business entity, my dreams, and their curiosity became the fuel that gave me the courage to move forward into a journey that was-and continues to be-sometimes full of color and sometimes very gray and foggy.
We didn’t know when the house would sell. We didn’t know how the next steps would unfold. But on those walks, the future stopped being a question and started becoming a direction.
And that was enough.
