Saying Goodbye
Last weekend I relocated to southern Oregon from our home in north central Washington state. My husband has been working in Oregon for the past year, and until his interim position there became permanent, we decided it was best for me to hold the fort in Wenatchee. Now that he’s set there, the house is on the market (has been for several months now), and we decided we were fed up with being 600 miles apart. Hence, my move.
As bothersome as dealing with all the practical logistics of a move is (sorting, packing, closing accounts and forwarding mail), I mind much more all the letting go and goodbye saying that comes with pulling up stakes. I’m not even talking about the obvious farewells to great neighbors, coworkers and dear friends with whom we’ve shared food, wine, laughter and life’s highs and lows over the last six years. Those are difficult, but I know we’ll continue to stay in touch with those folks and still see them occasionally.
No, the last few weeks I’ve found myself getting sad and even a little teary when I realize I won’t be seeing the gals at the UPS store that help me get my work shipped out on time and got my daughter’s wedding gown safely to Chicago. I’ll miss my favorite teller at the bank who is unfailingly cheerful and knows our whole family when we come through the drive-through, and I doubt there’s a friendlier postal worker in America than Rick at the main post office in town. There’s the older gentleman who bags groceries at Safeway, the fellow exercisers in my Pilates class, the kids who skateboard by the house every day.
Moving reminds me of all those connections we have in our lives. So many we know only by sight or because our paths cross consistently in our day-to-day rituals. In that sense they are anonymous, as we are to them, and yet they are a part of the comforting fabric of our place in the world. Its hard to rip oneself away from that familiarity and face the long process of building new connections in a new place–being the new kid on the block when everyone else seems to be happily settled in their routines and oblivious to you.
But I know, from having traveled this path before, that it is in establishing those very same anonymous connections with the store clerks, delivery men and bank tellers in my new town that I will start to feel at home and at peace with where I have landed.
Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader
