After the Move, the Island
“What began as a poorly timed beach trip—mere days after a cross-state move—became an unexpectedly restorative pause between lives.”
We left Chevy Chase in early August 2023. It was the place we raised our two young children, where we knew the streets to avoid traffic, where our favorite barista remembered our names, and where our neighbors felt like extended family. After twenty years, we packed up, said goodbye, and moved to New York.
The boxes were barely unpacked when we left again — this time, for Martha’s Vineyard. Our trip had been planned nearly a year earlier, back when our life still fit inside our home on Garnett Drive. At the time, it was just another summer beach vacation, part of the annual ritual of escape. But the move threw off our center of gravity, and suddenly, vacation felt not only ill-timed but disorienting. It was hard to justify going anywhere when we hadn’t even settled into our new home.
Still, ferry tickets secured and rental house paid for, we went.
I packed a small duffel bag with overalls, jeans, a few cotton sundresses, swimsuits, and sweats. I didn’t bring heels or a hairdryer. No makeup, even. Just the basics, and not in the effortless-chic kind of way — more in the “I no longer know who I am or what I need” kind of way. The kids, dazed but excited, piled into the car.
We had rented a home in Chilmark, a town on the quieter, wilder, western side of the island. Our realtor guided us towards an open plan prefab with four bedrooms and a back deck overlooking a tangle of green. It was near enough to everything without being near much at all. After reading this Dwell feature, we were sold.
Our home for those two weeks backed up to a small rise, just past the Grey Barn and Farm. The walk to the bakery was maybe ten minutes, dusty and sunlit, and it became our morning routine. We’d line up early for buttery kouign-amann or warm croissants, past the cows grazing lazily in the pasture. The kids picked wildflowers and chased the farm cats.
The Vineyard, we quickly learned, doesn’t demand much of you. It lets you be — which is, ironically, what we’d forgotten how to do in the midst of our move.
There’s something radical about traveling right after a move. You’re already unmoored. Your sense of routine is gone. You’re half-stranger, half-storyteller. And when you land somewhere that isn’t asking you to perform vacation — not in the matching-luggage, pre-packed itineraries kind of way — it frees you up to simply inhabit the hours.
We lived those days by mood, not by plan.
One morning, we built sandcastles at Lucy Vincent Beach, windblown and happy. Another day, we watched our younger two eat dinner naked on the back deck, cheeks flushed and sticky with watermelon. We grilled shrimp and corn on the cob. We made s’mores. We stayed in pajamas until noon and read stories on the floor of our kids’ rooms.
We did the usual Vineyard things, too — dinner in Edgartown with friends, rainbow-sprinkle cones from Mad Martha’s after riding the Flying Horses Carousel, a stop at the Agricultural Fair in West Tisbury where the kids rode the ferris wheel and pet the farm animals. But nothing was over-orchestrated. The days had a rhythm, but no requirement.
Julia spent a week in a half-day camp at the Chilmark Community Center. Each afternoon, she returned with her face painted and her hands full of crafts. Meanwhile, I slipped off to Hot Yoga MV when I could, just to feel my body stretch into itself again. One morning we sat in bed doing sticker books with our toddler while drinking coffee and listening to the rain on the deck. Another afternoon, we found ourselves petting baby goats at Native Earth Teaching Farm, entirely by accident.
Even the more curated moments, like dinner at Chilmark Tavern with vadouvan curry mussels and a glass of rosé, felt like part of the same relaxed loop.
We were living inside the pause.
Vacation usually exists as punctuation at the end of something — a reward for completion. But this trip was different. We were mid-sentence. Slightly undone.
And perhaps that’s what made it all feel so radical. We hadn’t come to the island with a goal. We weren’t chasing rest—we had been thrust into it. And in that sudden space between one version of life and the next, the Vineyard opened its arms.
There is healing in geography, if you let it work quietly. In the routine of walking for bread, in barefoot mornings, in cows at the fenceline. In watching your children lose track of time. In letting yourself do the same.
We spent an afternoon at Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, walking slowly down to the water, the air quiet in that unmistakable Vineyard way. We bought scones at 7a, fresh produce at Morning Glory, and lobster rolls from Menemsha Fish Market. We visited the local children’s libraries and played Scrabble after the younger kids went to bed. We skipped rocks and colored and drank wine and asked no more of the hours than they were willing to give.
We weren’t trying to make it perfect — but it ended up being close.
I think about that strange window of time, now that we're back in the rhythm of regular life. We’re fully in New York now — kids in school, shoes by the front door, commutes and groceries and weekends booked with soccer games and birthday parties. But the Vineyard remains in my memory as this strange, suspended moment: the soft landing we didn’t know we needed.
If I learned anything, it’s this — sometimes the best kind of travel isn’t the one you plan for. It’s the one that catches you mid-transition — when you’re raw and uncertain. When the version of you who arrives isn’t whole yet, but still shows up. That’s when the right place, given freely, can begin to stitch things back together.
And that, maybe, is what Martha’s Vineyard gave us.
Not a vacation. But a beginning.
