The Big Day .....Finally

Well, who would have believed it, but my big day finally arrived. After a last-minute, all-night, panicked packing frenzy, I found myself at the airport, well ahead of schedule, yet still, in the end, seemingly without the time for proper goodbyes. Mostly, perhaps, because it really did not seem like goodbye, not then. But later, as the plane taxied off with Janis Joplin's "Leaving on a Jet plane" crooning dramatically from my mp3 player, it finally occurred to me that the view outside my window was not one which I would be seeing again anytime soon, nor those dearly beloved faces or comfortably familiar streets. In short, it all finally became shockingly real. I was not just leaving for a brief vacation, but a small lifetime in itself… months, possibly a year, perhaps (dare I say it?) even longer.

How short that sounds, and yet, a year! That's 365 days without seeing them, hugging them, interacting with them on a daily basis as I have done for the last 21 years of my life. And despite all of the half-envious declarations of how I will return a changed person, it is not until now, in this moment, that I truly believe that to be true. After all, how can it not be so?

Which is how I came to be sitting here, peering through the porthole in vain for a last glimpse of a mint-green car along the highway or a familiar building, and crying endless silent tears, knowing both a sense of profound loss and an exhilarating joy of what lies ahead.

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