She's Leaving Town

Many different religious groups visited me after I was shot.  Only the Jews came with food - a Shabbat dinner worthy of King Solomon.  The conversation was lively and felt comfortable; though none of us had met before, the cultural connection was strong enough that it didn't matter that we were strangers.  

Among the visitors was a writer with a purple streak in her hair.  Her charge was to write about the short Jewish girl from New York who'd been perforated while participating in American Democracy.  What happened was a friendship.

Her car was covered with stickers supporting choice and voting and equal rights and all the other things that Jewish liberals believe are good.  Those decorations kept her from replacing it long after its expiration date - they were hard to part with.  

We'd have breakfast or brunch all around town, chatting up a storm about our children and their children and her writing and my blogging and politics and growing older.  It was the growing older part that interested us the most.  So much was happening, so much was changing, and we still had the energy and the passion to try to influence the future..... but we weren't getting any younger.

Life was going on far from us - where the next generation was raising their progeny.  It was so very very hard for us to be so very very far from them.  

And then a bcc'd email told me the news - she's leaving Tucson for Minneapolis.

Tucson has beautiful weather and many human connections but it's missing the one thing that is most important - her grandkids.  They and their parents live in the frozen north.  Pandemica proved something to her - that is too far from Arizona.

Her granddaughter's name is a combination of her grandmothers' monikers.  Her grandson is growing so quickly she just can't keep up from a distance.   The parents like her and she likes them.  Though she visits frequently, there's nothing like being right there, all the time, sharing the child care responsibilities and the fun.

Spending time in Maine this summer, surrounded by family who joined her for a summertime idyll, solidified her decision.  Saying goodbye was hard.  She decided that she wasn't doing that any more.

And so she's leaving, on Tuesday, for a one bedroom apartment close to the kiddos, far from the friends and adventures she's had here in the desert.  She'll be in a place with theatre and music and family.  She'll dance and write and hug.  I'll miss her smiling face, her sunny attitude, her determination to right the wrongs of the world.  We'll still email.  We won't be having breakfast.

I understand all her reasons.  That doesn't mean I won't miss her.  A lot.

Happy trails, my friend.  Send postcards.  Come to visit anytime; there are always clean sheets on the guest bed.