Three men came to our apartment, packed up our stuff and they were gone in less than an hour and a half. When we see our possessions again, we’ll be a continent and an ocean away from here, Moldova, the small country where we have lived for the past 18 months.
Thank you Moldova, for being friendly and safe, for having generous people and lovely wine. It was good knowing you and your people who made us feel welcome.
Expat life. You pack up, you move, you unpack, you live, you make friends, you pack up, you say goodbye. Repeat, repeat, repeat. So it is for the serial expats at any rate. If only I could box up my friends, ship them along with my special dishes and funky jewelry collected in different places around the world. But no, I will have to leave them behind.
I said goodbye to my book club friends on Wednesday. We drank Moldovan wine, we had a good-sad time, we talked about meeting up in France some time in the future. We all dreaded the goodbyes. Partir est mourir un peu, as the French say: Leaving is dying a little.
Thursday night was my last weekly drinks-with-the-girls night where we have deep discussions about saving the world and where to get a good manicure. We drank champagne and toasted to friendship. We decided to say “until next time” because, hey, it happens. It might not be forever. We’ll see each other again, somewhere, sometime. Hope springs eternal. In the meantime there’s Facebook and email and this blog.
There will be more goodbyes this weekend. And then, on Wednesday we’ll board a plane and begin the trek back to our little house in West Virginia in the US, where we will be until we decide on new horizons next year.
I don’t mind the packing and unpacking. I love discovering new countries, meeting new people. What I don’t love is saying goodbye to friends. There is no need for me to elaborate on this part of the nomadic life because most expats share the same feelings about it: It’s dying a little and it sucks. So I’m going to stop here. Except let me say this: The only way to avoid the misery of goodbyes is to simply not make friends. It’s not a skill I want to cultivate.
Goodbye to all of you. You know who you are. Thanks for being my friends, thanks for all the good talks and happy times. Au revoir! See you next time!
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