Voy, vas, van…

ON THE ROAD AGAIN.

I go. You go. They go.

Coming and going. The revolving doors of the world are turning still. The week we got home, we discovered that a dear friend had failed to mention the return of her cancer, and had left this world the day we came into town. Today we’ve heard an old acquaintance has died in a rafting accident.

Coming and going.

It’s a little hard to wrap our heads around, and being in this forward motion all the time has robbed us of stopping as we ought, to celebrate the lives of friends and loved ones. And yet, forever moving has also, in a way, created an easy lie to tell oneself; as we move on, everything is as we left it, when it vanishes in our rear view mirror. Everyone is somewhere… and now, somewhere else. Perhaps we’ll just run into them later, at another time…

Coming and going, saying hello, and now, goodbye.

Life has hit Fast Forward, as we’ve been informed that our possessions have somehow reached the port in PR without us. Quelle surprise! — or, as we should say now, ¡Qué sorpresa! The communication we expected to alert us to the ship’s departure from Rotterdam never materialized, and so we’ve been caught a bit off-guard. Now before us are getting to our next destination (check) finding a place to land (pending) and finding the means to get us to our various landing places (also pending). It was good to stop traveling for a moment, anyway, to give T’s lung inflammation and heavy cough a chance to sort themselves out — the hives, at last, have retreated, as has most of the dazed-and-confused vacant stares from jetlag. Dazed and confused stares for other reasons remain. It’s all the coming and going.

It was good to pause briefly mid-move in order to see friends. We’ve enjoyed reconnecting. However, we have found the truth of the matter is that it’s not possible to see everyone. We figured this out on our second visit home, when we had guests visiting until past eleven, and our flight left at four a.m., and we didn’t have the heart to say, “GET OUT, we have to pack! We have to sleep!” (Trust us, we’ve gotten the heart since then.) Self-preservation, better late than never, has finally kicked in, and despite dearly wanting to see everyone, and get in touch, (we owe several folk emails, and quite a few acquaintances, friends, and family we owe a meal or a chat) we know better: it’s not going to happen. We’ve wanted to spend more time with you, but between the illness (T.’s superpower right now is apparently Snot Creation) and the general busyness (Oh, yes, we’re still working during the week; D. on contracts, T. on yet another huge editorial project), we haven’t managed it. Please know it is our stated intention to be in the state more often, and we’re sure we’ll catch up to you around the holidays.

That seems an awful thing to say, with the number of people we love being lost – but the truth is this: we love you now. We love you whether or not we have face time with you. You can stay in this world or leave it, knowing that. Even if we don’t see each other again for awhile, we thought of you while we were here, and in our hyperbusy lives, we are working to prune things away to create more time.

It’s magical thinking, maybe, that there’s something we can do to produce more of something both finite and infinite, but I think, if we’re quick, we can find it – a moment for our hands to touch, clasp, and squeeze, as we go through the revolving doors called Life.

Coming and going. To everything, there is a season, after all, so perhaps now is our season to fly by quickly, and hurry on to our next destination. You are in our hearts, and we hope we’ll see you as we pass.