The big good-bye

After 6 months of planning, 2 weeks of prolonged good-byes, a week of packing up our house, and a frantic 24 hours of packing, we are finally on our way.   We made it as far as airport security before we realized what a bad mistake we had made packing so much stuff.  By the time we got to the gate we were brainstorming what we could take out of our luggage in New York and ship back home.   The stack of Ronan’s school textbooks will be the first to go.   What were we thinking?  He’s not going to be doing schoolwork until September anyway!  His school recommended that we follow their curriculum so that he stays on track with his classmates but I can’t imagine us lugging all these books around the world.  Research on online resources will start in earnest this summer.  If we don’t find something suitable, we’ll get the books shipped to us in September but at least avoid lugging them around Europe for 3 months.

We’ve had a lot of people ask us how it feels to be leaving for a year.  There’s a complex mix of emotions.  Obviously excited but also sad (saying bye to everyone we know and love for a whole year), lucky (how lucky are we to be able to do this!), anxious (what if this is a mistake?), a little overwhelmed (there are so many things to organize before leaving for a year), and surprisingly….proud.   I have had so many ideas and dreams thoughout my life.  Most have never become reality.  Things I wanted to do but ultimately decided I couldn’t for whatever reason.  Some were little things like trying to start playing soccer as a 40-something year old.  I always wanted to play soccer and one day coach my daughter (or sons!) but after one season of playing I realized that committing to a weekly evening schedule brought too much stress into my life.  Some were big dreams like wanting to move to San Francisco after graduating university.  After being way to analytical about it for a 20-something, I ended up moving to Calgary instead to save money for a couple of years.   Not this time.   I wouldn’t let San Francisco become Calgary again.  We committed to a dream and we’ve made it a reality!   We are literally sitting on an airplane on our way to our first stop, NYC, not to return to home for year.  How many people get to live out their dream like this? 

It would have been easy at various points along the way to decide this wasn’t the right time.  Should we save more money first? Should we wait for the kids to get a bit older? What will this do to our retirement?  I read a lot of travel blogs over these last 6 months.  Mostly blogs by families doing similar long-term travel.  There was not one of them that said it was a mistake and they wish they hadn’t done it.  The message was consistent – it will never be the right time, you just need to commit and find a way to make it happen. 

The good-byes were hard.  While it was sad to say bye to our friends and family, the hardest goodbyes were watching the kids say goodbye to their friends.  Ronan in particular.  He is at the age now where he is really developing close friendships and he’s old enough to understand that he’ll miss out on a year where all his friends will be doing things without him.  I think if we had waited another year, it would have been much harder for him to leave for a year.  It was difficult to watch him and his close friends try to deal with their emotions.  Sadness sometimes manifested as anger.  Sometimes tears.  A highlight was when Ronan’s class gave him a send-off (he left school two weeks before the end of the school year).  Ronan’s teacher managed to secretly give the rest of the class a homework assignment to make goodbye cards for Ronan.  On his last day, the class sang him a good-bye song and presented him with these cards.  So thoughtful and so sweet.  He was really touched, as were we.

The twins haven’t really processed their emotions yet but I have a feeling that will come and there will be some sadness when they start remembering our neighborhood and their best friends.  For the moment, they are still wrapped up in a bubble of excitement about their ‘trip around the world’.

It was definitely hard to say bye to Ashley and Meghan, our older daughters.   Meghan will be in her senior year of high school this coming year and Ashley will continue in college.  We had dinner with them the night before leaving.   We have been remembering the last time we went to New York – Ashley was 11 and Meghan was the same age as Ronan is now.  Ronan was a baby.  Time goes so fast.  We are excited that they will come to visit us for Christmas break later this year.

Saying bye to Bailey, our dog, was sad.  For some reason knowing that he doesn’t understand, and that in his sweet innocent head he will expect we’ll still be there tomorrow makes it more sad than saying bye to people in some ways.  It was made all the harder because the poor guy had a cone on his head.  I wish he could come with us but we’re relieved and happy that he will be living next door to our house with our wonderful neighbors who love him as much as we do.

So here we all are.  Five tired but excited souls on our first flight of many.  No idea what adventures are ahead of us, and that feeling of excited anticipation is the greatest feeling of all.