Deadlines change everything.
Any college student with a term paper to write, reporter with a story to file or worker bee with a presentation to put together knows this. When you feel the crunch of time pressing down on you, every moment is a little more important.
That's certainly the experience we had during our last weeks in the States.
Our last month in Northern Virginia was a little crazy. We spent hours (many, many hours) working to get paperwork in order for Visa approvals, readying the house to go on the market and then clearing 5 years worth of junk out of it when it sold. We cheered on the Adorable Boy as he graduated from preschool, wrapped up the school year for the Adorable Girl, finished ongoing projects at work and trained our successors. I felt like we never stopped moving -- until we would crash on the air mattress in our bedroom at night.
We could have easily claimed to be "too busy" to see friends and family during this time because, truthfully, we were.
But we had that deadline bearing down on us: June 23 we would close on the house and leave NoVA for, well, forever maybe. This place we had put down roots and started to bloom with the help of so many wonderful people nourishing and steadying us through the years would be just another stop on our life's journey.
We simply could not leave without saying goodbye -- and making some last memories with those most important to us.
So that became our biggest priority. I called it "living like we're leaving." And it involved a lot of saying "yes!"
We said "yes" to every opportunity to see a friend, no matter where they lived or what the activity required. We would eat brunch with one set of friends and dinner out with another. We would watch a baseball game with the kids' pals and go out to eat with a family we had only met once -- and who spoke Vietnamese predominantly -- because the daughters had become close friends with the girl. We had pancakes with our wonderful neighbors even when half of us had a cold, and took Moses on a goodbye playdate to his best dog-buddy's house.
(If this sounds like your typical weekend, good on you! For us lazy introverts, it was a huge change!)
We threw our own goodbye party, and asked our guests to bring their own chairs to sit in as the house had been emptied of most furniture. I think we had about 50 people visit that day, smiling and laughing and wishing us well on the adventure ahead. We felt wonderfully loved. As a parting gift, I sent home grab bags of junk found around the house: a can of corn, a random tool Shane never opened, a clock radio. Some lucky guest went home with an original cassette tape of Nirvana's "Nevermind."
In addition to saying goodbye to the people of NoVA, I felt it important to say goodbye to the places, too. We took pictures of our neighborhood, the school, the house, our favorite foods and made scrapbooks for the Adorables. We jumped in the car when we had a few minutes of downtime one evening -- precious time that could have been spent sitting on borrowed chairs -- and rode down to the Washington Monument to say goodbye to the city.
This last-minute trip is one of my favorite memories of that time. The kids were waving a little American flag they brought with them from home as we walked along the base of the monument. The wind was so strong that our hair and hats were flying, and the flags that circle the monument were straight out. It was a beautiful night in the capital of our nation, a nation that -- let's be honest -- had disappointed me quite a bit over the last year. Still I got choked up thinking about leaving my land, my home -- and hoped that time, distance and a new perspective would help heal the rift.
Two days later, Shane boarded a plane to Auckland.
The goodbyes came more quickly after that. The kids and I said our final goodbye to Virginia and headed to the mountains of my hometown, where we stayed with my mom and her new husband for several weeks. We had more friends and family to catch up with there, and every visit ended with the same "goodbye, good luck" we had heard over and over before.
It was a truly special time for all of us -- and all because we made it so.
We lived and loved more passionately and tirelessly in those weeks than we had in all the years before. We had to; we were leaving. We had a deadline to meet and a new country waiting for us.
Often during that time -- when we were exhausted beyond belief but so fulfilled by being with friends and family -- I wondered why we didn't always live like this, why being "too busy" too often kept us from connecting. I vowed to change that when we got settled in our new home, to make it a priority to do the things that fulfill us with the people that make us happy.
Here in Auckland, we're still discovering what those things are and finding the people who will be important to us here. It takes time, after all, to put down new roots.
But when I'm missing "home" (on days like today, for instance) I think back on those last weeks in Virginia, look through the photos, remember the well wishes and feel happy, feel loved.
I'm grateful we made a point to live like we were leaving, as hard it was at the time. The love we felt then and memories we made will last long after we've gone.
