AUGUST!
August. Awe Gust. Awwwwwwwe Gust. You are a month.
When I was born.
Also, Chai-Chai was born too.
Falconers come.
Beating the drum
Travelling
... that we will do.
Jane, get me off this crazy thing...
Called uh ...
(skip the rest, blow out the candle. Stop the bass)
It's AUGUST. The month I turn a big 3-7. Chaya turns a big 0-4. We party like it's 1999 with a whole array of family. Oh and we might move. Somewhere far. Or near. Maybe this month. Maybe this fall. Who knows.
Two months out, my leg scar is taking its more permanent shape with no swelling and only some residual bruising.
Speaking of dissociated shots of my body, Andrew got his very own official PE seal. PE stands for professional engineer, because until now he's been doing it all for kicks. Several forms, years and tests later, he's a PROFESSIONAL, man. And he can stamp the crap out of things. I, for one, am structurally sound.
As alluded to, various events of August make it increasingly clear that the anticipated move date is upon us within the next few months. Of course who knows for sure. We could all die tomorrow! But we're talking a lot more about "the next home" and how we'll go about the transition. No lawns next time. Condos all the way. Renting even. Home ownership is a headache! Everything in *this* house is falling apart all at once in a grand cascade.
Since Chaya "HAAAAATES" her house (accursed place she must return to when all the fun is done), I'm sure she'll be thrilled. We've been discussing it and she's pretty well on board. It's gonna be a tree house with very good plumbing and a fridge apparently.
I mentioned to Chaya that when we moved, we'd say goodbyes to our friends. She asked what Goodbye meant and I had to think about it a bit.
Enter the rabbit hole...
I think this will be the first time "goodbye" may have meaning to her in a grander way than "DON'T LEAVE THIS HOUSE AT THIS MOMENT I'M NOT DONE WITH YOU".
The impermanence of infancy rendered previous partings meaningless. An infant's world - the hazy object impermanence of vanishing and reappearing - perhaps understands the fragility of presence more than the adult world. But it also has less place for the poignancy of a transition between "active" and "dormant" presence or the idea of memory and possibility. Wishing fare thee well to a person presumes that they will continue to exist in your absence in order to fare well or not. If they simply flicker in and out of existence, Goodbye is truly meaningless.
Not to mention Chaya's still undergoing a slow parsing out of reality in which she distinguishes those imaginary presences (snake, sister, friends, animals) and those groups that are roughly categorized as FRIEND (or in Chaya's world, Dita, because that is the only friend whose name she has bothered to learn after forgetting Sebastian's and Isla's). Honestly if Chaya meets somebody at the park and plays for a second, they're a friend. There is no scarcity in the concept of relationships for Chaya execpt for a select few familial roles that remain unique.
Several of Chaya's baby friends have vanished from her life. She may recognize them in photos, but she didn't understand they were once more present and then less.
All of her dearest friends now will likely be more recalled on the basis of photos and stories.They may or may not come into her presence again. To her it's all the same. If they're there, they will play. If they're going ot be there soon, exciting. If not... meh.
So what to say?
I'm not the biggest goodbyer, so I'm no expert.
Mostly, I'm a ghoster. Not in the newest fangled connotation of the word in which prospective love interests suddenly cut off all contact. Thank you much, I'll breakup-text my future exes before they get a chance to ghost or breakup text me themselves!
But I have a tendency to avoid the grand ceremony of Goodbying. One minute I'm there. Next minute I've moved all my stuff out of our dorm and left a glib but polite little note assuring my roommate I have not been kidnapped by the mafia or anything. That kind of fun ghosting!
Despite living in the same home most of my childhood, I changed schools a ton when I was younger. By my teen years, I was hopping homes and locations on a one to three year basis. I'd grown accustomed to the cycle of the school year replacing tribes, crushes and besties. And summer had its own rules and companions. It was just a thing. There was an inevitable and mutually recognized interchangeability of people that I took in surprisingly zen stride for a generally sentimental person who gets fiercely attached to anyone who vibes kinship.
As I got older I got way more attached to some people, all the more deeply in reaction to the ephermerality of most connection. Goodbye meant something, but often the actual practice of goodbye undermined that meaning in sheer and vexing bathos. At the very least we exchanged numbers and yearbook scrawlings
The dawn of the internet provided a particularly soft landing and more so as the lines between virtual and real intermingle. I'm more likely to throw out a "write me" or a "see you online" when I'm changing locations these days. Because in so many ways it isn't the same, but it isn't not the same. It softens the lines significantly.
But of course there still is a line between present and not present. I do understand that and crave the closure goodbye promises sometimes.Tried even to force it at times in my young adulthood.
"Closure is an illusion, the winking of the eye of a storm."
As often as not a solid goodbye has raised more questions than it answered. Threw the limbo of impending departure into a hindsighted limbo of future self-questioning. Tore at the very threads of one reality!! Sometimes they were just awkward and lame. Really special times, they were even a little hostile! (oh to never ever be a teen again!).
 |
| Sooooooo ready to just leave already and not talk to each other for... a few months/years/decades. |
Maybe my most effective goodbyes have been the sort that have slammed shut doors and layered them with cement. Forced a what-it-might-have-been to a breaking point, leaving me empty enough to have room to fill in the next adventure. Impossible to change my mind because there was no longer anything to go back to. But I feel like burning it all down is not the general goal of "Goodbye" usually..?
And honestly even then it really doesn't stick 100%. Life is nothing if not quintessentially fluid.
I guess goodbyes work better when you give up the idea of finality and think of each goodbye as more of a moment of transition that plays upon the ideas of finality as a spur for everything but. Part of a series of little adjustments and tugs fighting against tides and currents.
Just the appreciation of an encoded ending changes that interim relationship.
“Love is the kind of thing that's already happening by the time you notice it, that's how it works, and no matter how old you get, that doesn't change. Except that you can break it up into two entirely distinct types -- love where there's an end in sight and love where there isn't.”
This applies equally to all forms of relationship.
In the day to day mill of ongoing relationships there are so many things we don't say to each other. Words are simultaneously weak distractions from deeper truths and also terrifyingly transformative. The minor act of naming something can conjure it into a million times deeper reality. Or words can be forgotten, misunderstood, twisted or rejected, allowing a silent harmony to die off in an instant. It's hard to say. But in either case, there's often so much better understood in the space between word and gesture when sustainability is on the menu.
Discretely practical as we may mostly be, I think we want to share with all our little human hearts. Some things are burning to be preserved and transmitted. Not to die in the passage of time and forgetting. To be acknowledged ever so briefly. Even if it's as simple as "you matter" or "you changed me" or "I saw you." Which in theory we express daily, but in reality never so openly as when life is about to change.
Incidentally, first time I told Andrew I loved him: right before he went away to Nepal for a month. Safety net perhaps?
Goodbye as a marker of some significant transition has inherent opportunity: You can extend yourself in ways you'd never dream of doing if the relationship were meant to carry on according to the negotiated roles and scripts already set. The kind of things that we shy away from in the sustainable ongoing are written into the Goodbye Script.
There's a moment to tell the person exactly what they mean to you, for instance. To try to define the incredibly complex interplay of selves that persisted to that moment. It's artificial of course. People are always more to each other than any single role that they've adopted as the main template of their relationship. Words simultaneously evade and ignite feelings. Those spoken by our bodies no less so. The expiration date itself alters the connection ever more as the final parting approaches.
Goodbyes also shape memory - a final shared story to define the slew of shared moments that came before. A collaborative dance of creation before the slow erosion of time and absence. Picking and choosing what will endure. That of course diminishes unvarnished candor that might otherwise persist. And necessitates some kind of photo op, of course.
Maybe also, goodbyes are simply about the power of sharing the feeling of the present. Recognizing the joy and excitement and hope of two different futures, but also just allowing a tiny spark of shared space for the deep sorrow for that loss of future together. The dying potential of a million future stories that might have been shared. The pain of missing something familiar, and the different but powerful pain of forgetting and being forgotten - or at least stuffed into a smaller more digestible digital box. In that sense it's not about the past or the future, even though those two parts of time define it. A single last snippet of shared present that defies that relentless passage of time. .
For Chaya... the calculation of goodbye is less a thing. The awareness of all it can mean will take years to unfold. But I think it is also deeply present every time she howls at the thought her gramma is leaving. Every time she pushes mommy out the door to wave to her car. Every time she grabs the preschool doors and resists "HOME". Transitions. Man, they are intense.
Stagger out of rabbit hole and question whether I really really need to read another Banana Yoshimoto book after this one... yes, yes I do.
So... all that flashed in my mind as she asked...
I came up with "certain things we say and do when we're about to not see somebody as much to let them know they're important. And a chance to hug so extra tight we feel them even when they're gone. Or high five. Or fist bump. Or wave. You do you."
Chaya looked off into the distance with the profundity of babes and uttered what can only be described as unfettered truth: "My snake will build a treehouse for my friends! My snake is my friend. My snake is my sister."
That.
Just That.
No comments:
Post a Comment