Leaving is dread and sorrow swallowed down and stuck in my chest. It is worry tugging at my fingertips from the inside. It is salt taste in my mouth and tingling in my nose. It is repeated silent promises - a chant, a lament, a prayer. It is meaningful looks and hushed regret. It is three months is not a long time. Three months is nothing. It is ignoring the not nothing of three months and three thousand miles and five hours time difference.
Leaving is a return. A return to 'cat' and 'drum' and our loose routine. And 'daddy'. Most of all daddy. It is neighbours and friends and weather extremes. It is home, in its way. Or they are my home and they are here, except for the they who are there.
Since I was nineteen my heart has lived in two continents. Stretching tight across dark ocean, sharks with their fins swimming beneath its taught fibers. Leaving and Return is balancing that tightrope across the Atlantic. It is 'more wine please' and 'planes don't crash because of turbulence' (except when they do). It is jet-lag now worsened by being shared with an 11 month old who can't take sleeping tablets. Or wine.
After a week or so, the leaving fades the jet-lag recedes and we settle back to regular phone calls and occasional Skype. It stops feeling acute and assumes its usual background hum. I know this. It's fading already. But my oh my do I hate how my life is punctuated by goodbyes.
This is the path you chose, my mum said.
You chose this for us too. She didn't say.
