THE GOODBYE GIRL

I think I know how a migratory bird must feel at that moment it spreads its wings wide to meet the winds of chance and providence for its long journey to the future. Maybe a little bit anxious - after all there are dangers out there. Maybe a little weary from making its preparations for the journey. Maybe excited about what’s ahead. Perhaps it mostly feels driven to replay an ancient instinct to leave its nest and explore anew.

I, too, am anxious and will undoubtedly be weary from all my preparations but excited to see what’s out there. I certainly feel driven to head right into the future, to see new places and meet new characters. I leave my nest all the time – to backpack, for Road Trips (Road Trip is a proper noun in my life), to travel abroad. But this time I’ll live with people not of my specific choosing – and I’ll have to get along with them. I’ve been thinking a lot about those skills of compatible living – patience, compromise, generosity, understanding, mutual respect.

I’d say most 60-year-olds are more set in their ways than the ‘youngers’, with more certainty of what works best for them and more skill at choosing a lifestyle that provides that. Moving in with people you’ve never met and did not choose is more like summer camp – which is largely about learning to live in a diverse world with people you might not choose to sit next to on public transportation.

Yesterday about 50 of my friends from several tangents of my life gathered to help me welcome my 60^th year of life as well to say aloha as I leave for Yellowstone and a very different existence.  These are people I have definitely ‘chosen’ to be in my life – my church family, my best friends, my business friends, my backpacker and outdoor playmates. My ‘circles’.

There is comfort in knowing your friends will be there to welcome you back when you land back in your nest. Although everyone will still be walking their different paths and no certainty exists, I’m sure in my heart I’ll be drinking Olivia’s home-made Sangria again, laughing at Robbie’s newest attempt to break the rules (she’s in her 80s), admiring Sharon’s and Barb’s newest fashion accessories…..no stragglers among my friends! They move through life with joy. If it’s not present, they make it up as they go along. I can count on this. And that, too, gives me comfort.

Thinking of those strangers with whom I’ll be sharing my dorm room, my bathroom, and my dining hall, I choose to remember that they, too, have left their friends, their families to start a new adventure for themselves. Perhaps we already have something in common. At the core of our beings, maybe we will discover we are all adventurers at heart.

I’m sure we will swap stories and I’ll tell them about the canoe pack down the Colorado with Max, Gloria, Suzie, Craig and Connie and 24 of my other outdoor playmates.  I’ll tell them about my church family’s deep and cutting-edge commitment to social justice and the influence they had on my son’s career choices. I’ll swap stories about my sometimes perilous (by choice) Road Trips with Sharon and Annie and Daniel.  And then some of them will become a new ‘circle’ of friends in my life and I’ll have stories of skinny-dipping in that secret hot springs with Betty from Minnesota, kayaking with Jim from Vermont and seeing my first grizzly up close with Bert from Alabama to tell my old friends. And in roughly five months, another party will be held as my new circle of friends and I repeat an ancient ritual and turn toward our nests back home.