This is my last Monday in the United States for quite a while: I leave for Atlanta on Sunday, and then fly to Guatemala City on Monday morning. Very soon I'll be measuring out my life in firsts.
And thank goodness now all I have to do is twiddle my thumbs and update this blog!
No. Today I spent seven hours— seven hours when I was not packing, or, you know, freaking out in various ways— on the phone with various bureaucrats, doing everything from forwarding my mail to making sure my electric bill and my car insurance and my internet and my magazine subscription get cancelled to bargaining with the USDA so that the cat can finally get her ridiculously complicated Guatemalan visa (I don't need one, but she does!) to registering with the State Department to arranging for my boxes to ship home (on Amtrak! that's a thing!) to helping AirTran figure out why they didn't have me in their system even though I bought my ticket months ago (turns out some overly imaginative agent had recorded my name in the system as one "E. Captain")—
Ay.
And in the next few days: packing, and then more packing, and then shipping, and then more packing, and then hauling furniture, and then more packing. And then more packing. Oh, and packing.
It's all so overwhelming that I haven't really had time to process that, come this time next week, I will be living in a small town in Guatemala. Which is, I think, both a positive and a negative— I don't have time to dwell, but I also don't have time to dwell.
The other day, my friend asked me if, at this point, I am more excited or more nervous. I am much calmer than I would expect I would be, and I think that that is because I am excited— but in a calmer way than I typically am excited. I am not excited about particular things, because I don't really know what's in store; I am excited about the experience in general, because I have a gut feeling that this— whatever this may be— is the right thing for me to be doing at this particular time. (Another friend asked if I'd be sad to leave Boston, and, having thought about this for the past few months, I immediately replied that I don't really know, because Boston has ceased, in some ways, to seem like its own thing: after being here for so long, Boston has become my default, my normal. And when I said that, my friend looked very concerned. "You know," he said, pursing his lips, "If Boston seems normal to you, then it is definitely time to move.")
Most of these end-chores seem stressful, but, in a more cosmic sense, easy: you cancel Comcast, and then you don't ever have to think about Comcast ever again. (A girl can dream, okay!?) But some things pack a gut punch. Some of these gut-punchers are universal, predictable (saying goodbye to good friends; walking through beloved neighborhoods for what I know will be the last time for quite a while), and some of which are less so (selling my car; the bizarre sunshowers we've had today; finding a lonely holey sock at the bottom of my dresser.)
Mulling these over— why am I having such a hard time selling my car? It's a car, after all!— I realize that a lot of things that I've been finding unexpectedly hard are general things that have become, over time, very specific, and very meaningful. My car is not just a car; it is— she is— my car. The car— her name is Emmylou— has been my constant companion for 30,878 miles, through all types of terrain and all types of weather, literal and figurative, and I've imbued her with personality. She is the basis for countless associations, and she has become a vehicle (it's late, okay!? I get punny) for my nostalgia. These streets that were once so bland and so anonymous have become my streets— my bland and anonymous streets. This geography is a palimpsest of my experiences; I walk along the Red Line and think back to who lived here and who lived here and here and when, when I went to dinner here with this person, when this happened, who I was at this point and this point and that. I cannot separate my lived experiences from where I lived them.
I remember, as a high school senior, visiting for the first time what would become my college campus: it seemed terrifyingly huge and urban and complicated. And I remember, a year later, walking the same route, easily, knowing exactly where I was going: and then having a sudden recollection of how it had seemed just a year before. The campus had become familiar, mine: it had become a setting, and not the experience itself.
And so it has been with everywhere I've lived; the foreground becomes background, the terrifying ordered, the exotic normalized. And in many, fortunate instances, too, the unfamiliar— while staying externally, objectively the same— becomes not just familiar, but comforting, and even loved: like looking at someone you now know, and realizing they are beautiful.
Coming back to my apartment after being away for a week, I was struck, when I first walked in the door, at its low ceilings, its heat and smallness. It was, of course, because I'd just returned from a large, cool place with high ceilings; my perceptions of the world are apparently that simplistic and comparative. But, after only a few days back, it has become, once again, my default; and, now that I'm leaving, its idiosyncrasies, its uniqueness and its lovability, stand out more and more. I will miss this place; I will miss Boston; I will miss, most of all, the people I've come to find beautiful. But I also know, in some peaceful, heart-of-hearts place, that it is time to go somewhere new— to experience the onslaught of novelty that will come to be my background, my normal, mine.
Until then, though: ohmygodohmygod packing.
(And a special hi to Catherine B., cheerleader extraordinaire!)
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