Final Good-Byes

Loads of work and a bit of kitty drama on our last day in Ithaca helped keep my mind off of how sad we all were to leave. When I went to tuck our cat into a bathroom before the moving crew arrived, she jumped out of my arms and took off. I spent the day alternating between looking for her and doing last minute packing and cleaning. Even so, the weight of leaving was heavy. You would think supervising a crew of six men loading my belongings onto a truck would’ve cheered me up. Okay, it did help.

Handling the logistics of the move was the easy part. I am seriously cut out for physical labor. I popped Advil, drank whatever was left in the fridge and kept at it. I began fantasizing about running off with the Naglee Moving Company. I, too, could make a 9 – 5 life, taking cigarette breaks and piling into the small truck for a McDonald’s run at noon. Maybe I would become buff and tattooed and have an uncomplicated view of the world. I know I am not fooling anyone with this. If I can’t cut it as a Professor’s wife in upstate New York, I certainly am not going to be able to pull off wanton sex goddess on minimum wage.

Our friends hosted dinners for us every night last week and we got to spend time with most of the families we had grown to love. I joked that it was like an Indian wedding, with so many parties for days on end. I had to laugh or I would have cried. The kids seem fine, only talking about the nature they are going to miss--the deer, snow, lake and waterfalls. The Professor is going to miss it most of all. At least he will be traveling back often, continuing to teach part-time at Cornell.

My roots grew deep these past two years and pulling out feels like I am tearing off and leaving behind a limb. I know we’ll keep in touch and my family will go back to Ithaca in the summers, and some of our new friends will visit us in California, but it’s not the same as rolling up your sleeves and helping each other raise kids, stay married and carve out careers in person.

Maybe the best way to sum up how we eased leaving was that instead of saying “Good-Bye,” we said, “See you soon…”