One Week To Go
Planning for seven months, leaving in a week, it doesn’t seem real. I am working on this project, step by step, crossing things off the list, getting closer to being ready to get on that airplane. Once in a while I think, “What am I doing?” Should I change my mind? What if at the last minute I just chicken out! I am leaving everything and everyone I know, for a foreign country and a life I don’t know. Oh, I have plans and visions of what I will do and what my life will be like. But then I remember that the only thing I can really count on, is that reality always looks very different from what is imagined. Well, I can’t chicken out - I have no winter clothes and I no longer have a car or a place to live.
Some days I feel so vibrant, full of life, happy and strong. It’s a great feeling to dream and then create your life. It makes you feel capable and powerful! But that is not today.
Today I cried - I cried about my son, who my mom said will miss me but really only acts like he can’t wait 'til I’m gone so he can move into the apartment. (Later he told me he would really miss me.) And for my daughter, who headed off to the big city a few weeks ago. I really miss her. Then I cried about my dog, when my neighbor was worried about her getting up and down the stairs in the winter and again when the other neighbor spoke of how much she (my dog) loves me. She is getting old. I may not see her again. Should I stay here because of my dog? And again I cried, about my father. He is sick. I may never see him again and our differences, that have followed me throughout life, may never be resolved. Then there was that naysayer’s email. That is what I call the people who tell me I cannot or should not try to do what I am doing - naysayers. I try to ignore them, especially the ones in my own head!
So many mixed emotions... I didn’t know how many good friends I have - people who really care about me and will miss me. Everybody should leave the country just to see how much you’ll be missed! Then I was thinking about what if I was going to die, imminently, I mean. Every place I go, to everybody I know I say goodbye and let them know I care, as though I may never see them again. What if we could do that before we died, knowing we had, say, two weeks and it was normal practice for people to go around expressing their final fare wells. And then what if I came back right away, from my trip, I mean. People would ask “What are you doing here, you’re supposed to be gone, we said goodbye to you already!” I’d just have to turn around and leave all over again.
This experience, so far, has shown me other’s appreciation for me and it has shown me my own appreciation for them and for my world here in Montana. Not a day has gone by in the last seven months that I have not noticed the beautiful Montana big sky, the sweet little back alleys in my neighborhood, the way the light changes the color of the mountains in the evening, my great little apartment, the rockin’ stereo system in my car, Socrates Cafe and Foreign Film Night - I could go on and on. So why am I leaving, am I nuts!!!
No. I am not crazy, even though I have to ask myself that question frequently, to be certain. I am leaving because that is what I need to do. I am leaving because things change and instead of running from the changes, I choose to embrace them. The house I raised my kids in is raising new little kids now. My good friend and neighbor’s kids are grown, too. They’ve moved to Seattle and her house will soon have new little kids in it. I think of all those memories - baseball games, trick or treat, campfires in the back yard and then the cops knocking on my door at 3 a.m. looking to bust the teenagers that took off when the cops saw the fire! That’s the thing about memories and nostalgia, looking back it is all so much better than it really seemed. At the time it was just life - good, bad and in between but it was just life, just what you did every day. Yet thinking back today, it is another thing that makes me cry! I’ll tell you, if the dog and the naysayers don’t get me, the nostalgia will!
Still I move on, pushed by the momentum of the last seven months. I look at my list again and I am back to work: got the utilities in my son’s name today, got the gutter fixed, packed away some stuff I’m keeping, need to get and install a new thermostat tomorrow and I still don’t know how I am going to fit all that stuff I’m taking with me in two bags and a box.
It will come together. It has and it will. That is what I keep reminding myself. Life is something to be experienced, sometimes even walking forward in the dark. It all works out. It’s all good. And there is so much to look forward to. That’s what makes it fun - the unknown and the unexpected. Tomorrow I’ll be at it again, crossing more things off my list. And hopefully there will be no more crying between now and the day I get on the plane.
