Sunday Letter, March 8

Sunday letter. Little hello from way over here, to you all way over yonder.

We made it some several thousand miles through beautiful country (this beautiful country; this country is beautiful!), and landed in Portland on Thursday afternoon. Our belongings arrive Monday, and I'm thankful for the lag because our (wonderful) apartment is comically small. We want to live small; it's why we chose 800 square feet. But seeing it—it's the real life of our decisions. We spent a couple of fraught days planning how to dispense with the extraneous large pieces of furniture that would be too much (Habitat for Humanity!), and how to cope with feeling like dunces.

Done. Coped. Looking happily ahead. And up and around and down because damn it, Portland is gorgeous.

You can see St. John's Bridge from our apartment, and nested under it is Cathedral Park. And up there in that photo is a willow tree growing at the base of one of the arches that give the park its name. That willow: being big but looking very, very small—a perfect little illustration of how I feel in this gargantuan space. Little-big Southern girl nestled very comfortably in a landscape that, from far away, makes her look smaller than she is. But you get closer and closer ...

I'm looking forward this week to getting our things; unpacking boxes and all my thoughts about this move (writing those in a letter to my brothers that will take me days to write); getting into a little routine once Patrick starts his job and it's just me and that girl King and those dogs staring at each other; and filling my time with all the things that will fill next week's Sunday Letter.

Much love, Lindsay