Packing

I totally should be. Packing, that is. But anyone who knows me could predict that is exactly what I'm not doing, and rather doing what I do best (procrastinating). It's not dire yet, and actually, the fact that I'm already this far into THINKING about packing three weeks before we go is entirely promising. But thinking about packing is getting me thinking about going and that leaves me with a whole mess of things to think about. So I'll indulge my procrastination and revel in a quiet house and my husband who is beside me watching some show where men in hard hats keep driving up to major swamps and shaking their heads and I can't really follow it. Anyways. What was I saying? Oh yeah. Packing...going...leaving.

Going is pretty much beside the point. I don't worry about going. I'm excited to go, in fact. I'm excited to be in my house and sleep in my bed and not go to bed every night calculating how many nights I have left before I have to start packing (there it is again) to move to the next bed. I'm excited to see our dog and our friends and count how many chickens Caleb has left (zero is my guess, poor Caleb). I'm excited to see Caleb get back into work and to see what Erogit and Goradit and Nanuk and Marta think of Daisy. I'm excited for Elsa and Ezra to feel secure and to watch them discover their home all over again.

Leaving is actually the point. I don't want to leave. Leaving makes my heart crack in a thousand different places. I don't know how to embrace this part of the life we live--the part where I don't get to be a part of Leah's daily life, watch Nola and Calven grow up with Daisy, hear Isla learn to finish her words, see Kellan run track and Brennan play soccer, laugh as Emma learns to walk and celebrate as Sam turns 5. I don't know how to love the part of my life that measures time in chunks of three years. Do you know how much my four year old grows in three years? She'll be seven. SEVEN. Before we return to the US and most of my family gets to see her again. My throat closes.

So my procrastination is not the only thing being indulged here. You didn't know you were being invited to a pity party tonight, did you? Apologies. I know in the end it's not really about me.

I don't even know how to finish this. There's no clean resolution here. Nothing I can come up with makes it any easier. It's just doing it. It's just leaving.

Thankfully, not yet. Three weeks still.