Goodbyes begin

When are you leaving? That's the way many conversations begin lately. It's a theme. The date of departure has been a vague undefinable point in an unknown future for many months. When it is nebulous, it's less threatening, less real. But that's changing.

Tonight was the second of the goodbyes. I've been avoiding them. I keep telling people, "Oh, we'll see you before we leave, don't worry."

I do mean it, but I'm also trying to avoid the unpleasantness of saying farewell to people that have significance and value to me. It's easier to just fade away, but that's not the way it will happen. The significance has gone both ways and so my friends and comrades won't allow me to quietly disappear. I love the time with the people, so it isn't the goodbyeing that is the problem. The departure is the problem.

Like a potted plant, I have grown happily in my snug corner of Kansas. Now as I prepare to leave and cross the ocean, my roots that have intertwined with many people here are being pulled and torn. I have to be separated from these dear people. While there is some tearing, I get to take pieces of them with me and I hope I am leaving some of myself behind too.

So I begin this blogging in order to sustain and nurture what is here. Yet I recognize that all our relationships will change and mutate into something different as the distance changes our circumstances.

Vive la difference.
(hmmm, I think that's French and I'm suppose to be learning Spanish....)

D.