In December of that first COVID winter, during the darkest stretch of it, my work went remote, and we did something that still makes me smile. We packed up our young family and our dogs and drove south toward West Palm Beach, Florida, with no real plan.
By the time we reached Delaware, the nerves had set in, and there was serious talk of turning around. Honestly, it wasn’t wrong. Leaving home in the middle of winter with a little one, our dogs and no idea where we were going was a little crazy. We kept going anyway. We stopped in South Carolina, rolled into West Palm Beach in January, and spent a few weeks there working remotely.
Somewhere in those weeks, we fell in love with the place. It felt like somewhere we could build a life, and over the months that followed we kept finding our way back.
Still, loving a place on a trip and deciding to move your whole family there are two very different things. New Jersey was home. It was where I grew up, where I went to school, where my career started and where our family began. That isn’t something you walk away from lightly.
The decision came, of all places, back up north. That November we went away for our wedding anniversary. The next morning we sat with coffee on a deck over the Delaware River and talked it through. Together, we made the call: we would move to Florida.
When we got home that night, we started organizing and packing up the house. It was decided. Within a few days the house was on the market, and by the end of December it was sold.
We gave ourselves an honest out. If we didn’t love it after a year, we’d move back. No hard feelings, no regrets, just an experiment.
We never went back.
What stays with me about that morning is how quietly it happened. There was no big announcement, just the two of us with coffee, looking at a river, agreeing to take a chance on something new.
I’m so grateful she said yes to the adventure, both on that drive south and on that deck. I know how lucky I am to have a partner who is willing to keep going past Delaware.
Today I live in West Palm Beach with my family and our dogs, and I count my blessings every day.