Sunday Scribblings: Goodbyes

I have said goodbye to long hair, faithful cats, pounds, and credit card debt. I have said goodbye to people I've loved: some lost, like an earring; some cast away slowly, like continental drift. I have said permanent goodbyes to people who have died, running my fingertips across cold faces as though the voltage of my grief could warm them to back to life, and I have said permanent goodbyes to people I still see at Target, our carts on different paths in the same aisle. I have said goodbye to the ghosts of the babies that my children once were--they are "big boys," now, and with their need to sermonize, clad in SpongeBob underpants, about their observations/opinions, they certainly don't let anyone forget it.

I have said goodbye to my childhood dream of living, unmarried, on the Big Island of Hawaii, writing highly acclaimed and hugely successful novels in the company of a cat. I have said goodbye to the belief that by digging in the backyard, I might find stegosaurus bones or an underground village. I have said goodbye to being tended--with toast, Coca-Cola, Paula Danziger books, and a soft comforter--by my mother when I am sick. I have said goodbye to the ideas of true love, fairness, and loyalty, and the dream of belonging to a big family. I have said goodbye to a smooth complexion and uninterrupted sleep (is there a connection?), and very recently, I have said goodbye to the drug dealer who lived in the back apartment in the house next door.

But I have said hello to many things, too: a steady-rock partner who quietly asserts the most logical arguments and keeps me level; the clutch your chest, joyride that is motherhood; morning pages; the realization that old dreams can be replaced with new ones (we.will.have.a.beachhouse.where.i.will.write.stories.); a calm from Woody Allen movies, split pea and barley soup, black coffee, and dry biographies; bliss in the blooming family that my husband and I have tended to and cultivated; an appreciation for my childhood hometown and the university there, that I attended; a degree of assertiveness of which I had never believed I could be capable; a budget that has enabled me to save a tidy amount for my boys' education; a passion for Great Standards, pride in showing up; and the comfort from urging one handwritten word, then, another, to crawl like beetles, across a page.

And most importantly, I have said hello to the knowledge that goodbyes don't always have to painful or severing. That I can look back at the time that I had spent with a person or an idea and feel that, like books, they had been loaned to me, however briefly, and that, for a moment, it had been magical. Though I will sometimes be overwhelmed with the awareness of what once or could have been, I will be okay: I will love my memories, overflowing from my pockets, but there will be different things for me to love later on.
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