Welcome Home, Now Say Goodbye....

I got back into Madison late last night, so happy to see my Daddy-007 and our darling Animal, (missing the big boys at camp, but knowing that I'd see them in a short week) but was disappointed to find that it was even more difficult to re-acclimate to life at home than I expected.

I was so busy all week in Montana at the photography seminar that I really didn't have time to worry about the impending last push out of the house and leaving our home for what might be, not just for three years, but for good. It was a niggling little bee that would buzz through my mind occasionally, but I could easily brush it away and keep on laughing and working. Coming back to the house and seeing it stripped just a bit more bare and then being almost immediately confronted with my husband's questions about this piece of furniture or that toy and then announcing changes to plans that I thought were concrete, made reentry extremely rocky, indeed.

The stress of the move has been debilitating for our relationship.... We have fought about various moving issues at every session with our marriage counselor for the last month and a half. Our confidence about moving our sessions to once a month last January has been replaced with a desire to go back to weekly sessions, but only having time for one every two weeks.

I know that I believe in this move. I know we are doing it for all the right reasons. We NEED this change if we want to be better parents, if we want to be better partners, if we want this family to succeed. The status quo is not working for us. We are drifting further apart as we follow our separate paths and we need a common cause to unite us. This transatlantic move is our common cause.

The problem is that I am terrified of saying goodbye to everything and everyone.

I knew that I would have to deal with it eventually, but now that I only have four more days left in Madison* I almost want to just slink away in the night, disappearing without having to say goodbye to anybody. I could just put up a farewell "note" on facebook and sit back and reap the comments, I think to myself, ...like a big, fucking coward.

But what I really want (and am afraid of at the same time) is to get together one last night with the all the key figures of my life in Madison: the women who formed the heart of the playgroup that saw my last two babies grow into preschoolers and grade-schoolers, the women who I cried with over my rambunctious children's naughty behavior, my tumultuous marriage, my children's health and my own health, the women across the street that I talk to on the sidewalk during the warm months and drink wine with during the colder months on book club nights (we actually gave up on the duplicitous title of "book" club a year-and-a-half ago, when I re-dubbed it The Bitchin' Wives Club--- yes, that's how I came up with the name for this blog), the women that I know I could call at 3am to watch the kids while we bring someone to the ER with a fever, my dear girlfriend that I talk to on the phone every day (even though I hate talking on the phone)....

As my dear friend C. said at our farewell gathering: We've had our party to laugh together, now we need another one to cry together.

I need to buy more tissue, ladies, because I don't think one box is going to be enough.

* We will live at our summer place for the month of July (after the house is emptied and packed into the sea container) and then actually leave for England in August.