Two Weeks and Counting

In two weeks, I will be on a plane to China.  In two weeks and a day, I will be at a new school, under a new sky, with a new roommate, learning a new language.  In less than a month, it will be the first day of school.

I am unbearably happy.

I am unspeakably sad.

And I want to throw up.


I am holding these last days in the palm of my hand.  They are so fragile that I am almost afraid to breathe.  I go to the splash park with Shari and her kids.  Shari sprays her children with sunblock, and then lays hands on me forcibly and sprays me down too.  (Kyanne shows up later, and Shari does the same thing to her while I laugh and mock.)  And I watch Suzannah test her limits on the playground and Isaac chug around the perimeter of the park, pausing occasionally to dance into the water, and I laugh with Shari and Kyanne and I stretch my legs out on the warm concrete, feel the sun ooze into my skin, and smile into the bright blue sky.

In my head, I tell myself to enjoy the lack of smog.

I don't think about the fact that this day will end, just as I didn't the day before when I was at the dog trials with the Catfarmer.  I will the moments into moving slow like honey, focusing all my attention on how my body feels lying on the grass, the way the small dogs combine hilarity and awe as they leap through the air.  We make fun of the dogs and each other, eat at the Mongolian Grill, try to figure out what kind of secret high-five a cobra and a mongoose would have (answer: a violent one).

The day ends, both times.  Both times I say goodbye cheerily, knowing that I'll see these people at least one more time before I go.  After the splash park day, Suzannah hugs me for a solid five minutes, and then suggests that "Mommy, Isaac should hug Becca, too."  

When her mother does not immediately react, she needles, "Mommy, maybe you should tell Isaac why he should hug Becca."  

Shari does that thing where her entire face is doubting you.  "Why, Zannah?  Isaac's...busy, right now."  (Isaac is currently yelling his three year-old head off in the living room.)

Suzannah quirks her mouth.  "Because Becca's moving to China so we won't get to hug her very many more times."

And that ever-so-delicate tranquility I've been taking such good care of breaks in the palm of my hand, because now I remember.

I've been dreading these two weeks.  I deliberately blanked them out in my mind, not wanting to acknowledge the actual moments of my parting.  The last time Shari makes me dinner.  The last time I have lunch with the Catfarmer.  The last time that Kyanne and I roam Southcenter Mall, looking at shoes.  The last time I get a heartfelt hug from this amazing seven year-old.

Instead, it's not so simple.  Everything is made so much more beautiful by its imminent loss.  The (smog-free) sky is bluer.  The mountains are harsher, more jagged, more severe.  Evanescence is SO cliché, but it's also so true.  Every time I sit down to make a list of things I need to get done before I leave, I end up drifting away on a cloud of memory and nostalgia, of loving and losing.

(This is why I feel like I'm going to throw up.  Practical necessity is currently no match for moony-headed brain-wanderings, and I just KNOW that's going to make the last few days harder.)

It'll all get done because it has to.  In two weeks, I'll be sitting on a plane, clutching a stuffed penguin.  The apartment, the car, my bank accounts, the cat, and all the rest -- it'll all be sorted.  Everything will be okay.  And the day will end, because that has to happen too.

And hey -- listen, outside!

Seattle's giving me a thunderstorm before I go.

Tonight, I'm just going to enjoy the evanescence.