Christopher, Noe, Tally and I waved goodbye to Rex this weekend. Then I went inside and cried. We also said adieu to our fridge on Monday which I also cried about—although those were tears of joy (it’s been busted for a month and we’ve been shuttling food back and forth from our backup fridge in the carport . . . such fun in a robe with a kid on the hip). Crying over the loss of a truck and a fridge may seem like over-reacting, but to me it was a turning point, a milestone carved with—YOUR LIFE HAS CHANGED . . . BIG TIME!

You see, seven years ago, Christopher and I put everything we owned in storage, climbed into Rex and watched the San Francisco skyline recede in the rear view mirror. We first headed East for a night with our brand new God-daughter, Kate, and then to spend the turn of the millennium with our dear friends, the Curtins, in Denver. From there on it was South all the way, over the Texas border, down the spine of Central Mexico with all of its beguiling Colonial cities and then skipping over borders from Guatemala to Costa Rica, where we landed for a three month stay. By the time we arrived back in the US seven months later, after traversing the route back up, we were changed people. Christopher said just after we crossed the border into San Diego (and just after I said I felt like we’d gone from being adventurers to being homeless) that he had a sneaking suspicion our journey had only just begun. And he was right.

The seven years since we pulled up stakes have been made up of one deliberate decision after another regarding where we wanted to put them down again—where, with whom, how. The where turned out to be Healdsburg, a place where we had made soulful connections with many wonderful people and which felt home to us down to our very core. So we bought a house, sunk down roots and put up a white picket fence (literally . . . we still laugh about that).

Yet still, every time we got behind the wheel of Rex there would be a frisson of memory of the thrill of the road. As if the curve of the seat was imprinted with the DNA of heart thumping checkpoints; cervezas after a long day of driving dusty desert roads; volcanoes looming beyond undulating tobacco fields; the thrum of cobblestones beneath the wheels and twisted spires silhouetted in the twilight on entering another Colonial city. Many of these moments—and others that were sparked by these—were captured in the collage of photographs on the front of our fridge.

But now Rex, our beat-up, black, gas-guzzling Ford Explorer, our chariot of freedom, is gone . . . along with the fridge that held the snapshot of our Old Life.

Now we have a brand spanking new, white, Toyota Highlander Hybrid . . . with a car seat. Car seat being the operative word and a little peanut named Noemi de Leon Huber being the operative factor of Our New Life. Yet the concept of her adoption—long before we said yes to it, long before she herself was even conceived—was formed seven years ago, in Antigua Guatemala, during our adventures in Rex. They are—our Old Life and New Life—somehow, connected. Now our brand spanking new white refrigerator—in lieu of shots of cathedrals and beaches, boats and jungle—will hold photos of our adorable little daughter as she grows, be a gallery for her artwork and a landing pad for schedules and kiddo contacts. And what shocks me most is, I couldn’t be more thrilled about it.

Christopher’s comment upon re-entry was right on. The journey had just begun . . . and it continues still.