So long, farewell
I've been feeling pensive lately. I feel compelled to write when I have other, more pressing things to do. As I type this, my kitchen lies in its after-dinner chaos, neglected.
Lately, I've been thinking about the life that I'll be leaving behind here. It's a strange feeling going about my daily routines with the thought hanging over me that it will soon be my last time doing this particular activity or being in this particular place. Some time ago, I wrote about first times, not realising then that I would soon be pondering the other end of the spectrum.
I didn't expect to feel sad about leaving—I had been wanting to return home, after all, and I didn't miss this city at all the whole month I was back home during the summer. But it turns out that goodbyes are harder than I thought. Leaving behind what has been my entire life and world for the past year and more, possibly never to see it again, is an unfamiliar situation that I find hard to process.
Soon, I will have to say my goodbyes to:
- the supermarket around the corner that I frequent, despite its poor selection of produce, where my four-year-old, with his effortless charm, has received free ham and stickers
- the best chǎo fàn (fried rice) I have tasted in my life, at my favourite restaurant, whose servers adore my little one
- the kindergarten and all the freedom it offers for work and play, the teachers who have been nurturing my child, the children who have been his playmates and all the sweet interactions that happen between them
- the bus and train we ride almost every day, where my son repeats the announcements religiously in a language he does not understand, and where we sometimes take the train to the last stop on his request
- the parks, playgrounds, palaces, the amusement park—the many places we have gone, creating memories together as a family
- our home—this apartment with its large living room and narrow kitchen, this space where the boy zooms around in his car, clambers on the sofa and plays with his toys on the carpet, where we have snuggled on the couch reading books and hid under the covers in bed, where we have lived and loved in this season here.
We had a life in these spaces, and now that will all disappear along with our leaving. Though this city will not remember us, I will keep its memory in my heart. Thank you—you have not been perfect, for who is?—still, for a time, you have been to us a home away from home.
And soon I will say to you, my last—
Goodbye.