Late Autumn In Transit
The last two weeks have passed like a low tide—quiet, revealing things normally hidden beneath the rush of days. Florida, briefly merciful, has softened its breath. The air in the mornings carries a coolness that feels almost borrowed, as though autumn slipped past the state line and lingered just long enough to remind me what stillness feels like. I step outside the RV and let it touch my skin, this rare cool air, and for a moment the world feels gentler.
Christmas approaches in its hushed, inevitable way. I feel it not through decorations—there are few of those here—but through instinct, through memory. Living in an RV teaches restraint. There is no room for indulgence, no space for sprawling traditions. I cannot decorate to my heart’s content, cannot drape corners with lights or let pine needles scatter where they may. Instead, the season exists inwardly, like a candle burning behind a shuttered window. I miss the ritual of excess, even as I understand the quiet discipline this life demands.
Where we are now feels heavy with people. Too many voices, too many engines, too much nearness. The land feels pressed upon, tired. I ache for space—for a Florida that still remembers itself before asphalt and convenience stores. I imagine a more rural place, where the night can be dark again and the stars are not embarrassed to show themselves. Somewhere the land exhales instead of crowds.
My husband, ever softer than he lets on, has made friends with two stray black cats who move through the evenings like shadows that learned how to purr. They appear at dusk, eyes glinting like small moons, bodies folding themselves into familiar corners as if they have always belonged to us. He talks about taking them with us when we leave, says it casually, but I can hear the decision already made. I watch him kneel to them, his voice low and gentle, and I think about how some souls recognize home faster than others.
Last night I fell asleep on the couch—an innocent mistake, punished thoroughly. I woke with my spine protesting, my back stiff and aching as if reminding me that temporary lives demand constant compromise. Even rest must be negotiated in small spaces. Pain lingers longer here, with nowhere to retreat from it.
Still, there is creation. There is bread. I have been making it with my own hands, marveling at how simple it is—flour, water, yeast, patience. Watching it rise feels like a quiet miracle, a reminder that nourishment does not need permission or packaging. The smell fills the RV, warm and grounding, a small rebellion against the artificial. I made mayonnaise too, standing there stunned by the ease of it, by the realization that I once paid for jars of chemicals when this, too, could be made in minutes. There is a strange grief in that realization, mixed with triumph.
Even here, even in an RV, it is possible to eat well, to care for the body as an act of defiance. Health does not require abundance, only intention. Still, I long for permanence. I long for a house—not fancy, not polished—but solid. Dirt beneath my feet that does not move. Walls that do not hum with engines passing too close. A large kitchen where I can stretch out dough without apologizing to the counter.
In my dreams, it is simple: a vast pole barn standing honest against the sky, its doors open to a view of a babbling brook. Water moving endlessly, unconcerned with schedules or noise. A place where silence is not rare but expected. Where mornings begin with mist and end with stars.
Until then, I live between motion and longing. I bake. I rest when I can. I watch cats choose us. I breathe in the cool Florida air as if storing it for later. These weeks have been a lesson in contrast—crowded yet intimate, temporary yet deeply rooted in quiet acts. Gothic not in darkness, but in endurance. In the beauty of wanting something more and surviving gently in the meantime.
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