The End of an Era

This month has been full of happy endings, and with the promise of new beginnings sure to be full of adjustments and adventure for me, my husband, and my two daughters. 

Quote by Albert Einstein

 My eldest daughter is about to graduate from high school.  I attended her final choir concert last week and as enjoyable as it was, it was a bit sad to know that it was the final musical performance in which she will perform here in our hometown where she has attended school for the past 13 years. Many of her peers whom I’ve watched grow and mature over the last several years, she and I may never see again.  It was definitely a bittersweet feeling.  

First Day of School!  2nd or 3rd Grade.

  

Brown Bag Lunch...Grab & Go!

Ready to go to Senior Prom!

Another First Day of School

Sporting her new duds for First Day of School

There will be no more “First Days of School” in which I force my girls to pose for a picture in our foyer or outside our front door, all decked out in their carefully selected outfits.  Only one more week of brown bag lunches made and packed while I am still bleary eyed and in need of coffee.  I will no longer get to witness the excitement of my girls getting ready for school dances or proms. It’s time to move on.  

My younger daughter, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, is 15 years old.   She just completed ninth grade at a school in California where she lives with her father.  When I drive past her previous school near my home, I am struck with sadness that I will not ever enter those doors again.  All the dedicated educators that I came to know when she was a student there, I likely will never see again.  She has chosen to move on, which means that I will not be able to participate in her final years of high school, except to encourage her to keep her studies a top priority, and to keep me abreast of any school and extra-curricular activities she is involved in so I can support her.  This has been a particularly unwelcome and worrisome turn of events, but I am learning to adjust.  She will be visiting us soon for summer vacation, and I look forward to spending some quality time with her.

Trying her cap and gown on for size!

Tomorrow, I need to fill out my daughter’s graduation announcements and get them sent out in the mail.  The commencement ceremony will take place at the same venue where mine was held just over a few decades ago.   My siblings and I all attended school in the same district in my hometown and three of us have children who have been or are currently enrolled in some of the same schools we attended (where some of the same teachers are still hanging on, educating a new generation!).  I had the thought of driving by the schools I attended as a youth before I move, just for nostalgia’s sake, but they’ve been remodeled and it just wouldn’t feel the same. It’s the end of an era, so to speak.

The elementary school my siblings and I, and some of our own children, attended.

The "Old School" version of my Junior High School.  It's been leveled and rebuilt now.

The courtyard at the high school my siblings and I, and some nieces and nephews attend(ed).

Since my husband and I met, we have been traveling back and forth from Amman where he lives, to Seattle where I live.  I have made 11 trips there since mid-2009 and he has come here almost as many times during that timeframe.  Strangely, we’ve become accustomed to our international marriage, and though it is not ideal and we miss each other terribly when we’re apart, we have adapted quite well under the circumstances.  His work has kept him there, and my daughters have kept me here. We knew from the outset that agreeing to this back and forth travel was the only possible way we could make our relationship work, and we committed ourselves wholly to this effort. 

As we speak, my husband is on his way to the Sea-Tac airport for a 3-week stay in which he will help me with all of the logistics of the move to Amman, and to tie up any loose ends related to the move.  I just realized tonight as I went about preparing for his arrival that I am going to miss the anticipation I always feel when I am about to be reunited with him after a few months apart.  Tomorrow is the last time I will wait, giddily, to pick him up at the airport. Our daily Skype and FaceTime calls will also come to an end.  I jokingly told him that I might have to go down the hall to the spare bedroom once we’re at our home in Amman, just so I can call him on Skype, it’s become so much a comforting part of our routine.  I know I will miss these sweet reunions, though fully sharing our lives together on a daily basis is not a bad trade off!

I belong to a book club that has been meeting every 6 weeks for over 6 years.  While I don’t always get a chance to read the books selected, I often attend the book club gatherings as we typically meet at either a coffee shop or restaurant.  Most of the members are ladies I  worked with from 2003-2008, so it’s been a way to stay in touch with my friends.  I’ll be sad to lose my place among this group of funny, interesting and intelligent ladies. Another ending, but I am hopeful that I will find a new book club group in Amman. 

With the impending move, I have been working diligently on becoming detached from my material possessions.  It has recently occurred to me that we can become extremely attached to non-material things as well.  I’ve become attached to rituals, to routines, to experiences, to buildings, even to machines (my Mac laptop is my Skype and FaceTime life-line, and will continue to be once I move abroad)!  A wise older woman once said to me, “Never care more about things than people!”  As I move on, closing the doors on some things, I open them to new experiences but the common threads are the people in my life who have made lasting imprints on my heart. 

I'll never forget my time with friends and family here at home!

I leave you, my readers, with the lyrics to a song about the seasons of our lives, and some pictures of my little girls enjoying the four seasons:

To everything - turn, turn, turn

There is a season - turn, turn, turn

And a time for every purpose under heaven  

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep

To everything - turn, turn, turn

There is a season - turn, turn, turn

And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down

A time to dance, a time to mourn

A time to cast away stones

A time to gather stones together

To everything - turn, turn, turn

There is a season - turn, turn, turn

And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time of war, a time of peace

A time of love, a time of hate

A time you may embrace

A time to refrain from embracing

To everything - turn, turn, turn

There is a season - turn, turn, turn

And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose

A time to rend, a time to sew

A time to love, a time to hate

A time of peace, I swear it's not too late!

(Turn, Turn, Turn is a song adapted entirely from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible (with the exception of the last line).  It was made popular by The Byrds in the 1960’s, and then again when it was included on the Forrest Gump movie soundtrack in the late 1990's.)

Good morning, Seattle, and Goodnight, Amman!

~M.