Why I Moved Without Saying Goodbye…

I suspect you can learn a lot about a person by how they bid a place and a chapter in their life goodbye. Or at least something of how that person feels about their impending move. To wit: are the farewells those of fireworks and fanfare, where every evening is given over to one last hoorah with this friend, that colleague, or another? Or is the leave-taking done “not with a bang, but a wimper?”

I suppose it’s because I moved around so much as a kid that I’ve always gone with the quiet exit. After all, I know all too well the price such a gypsy-knockabout existence exacts, and at what expense such adventures and new opportunities come. For no matter how heartfelt those cheery pledges to “stay in touch,” you’ll soon discover that the dual forces of time and distance are not to be gainsaid. Sadly, even the deepest of friendships erode when deprived the vital oxygen of conversations had day-to-day and face-to-face. Not true, you say! Social networking has changed all that! Maybe you’re right. But from where I sit, some 3,000 odd miles downriver from the headwaters of all your tweets, it’s hard not to feel a little left-out.

All of which is why, when life does send that moving truck my way, I’d sooner don a black veil than break out the bazookas and the party hats. Yes, I tend to mark these departures in life about as secretly and discretely as a single woman celebrating her 40^th birthday.

So if this is the first you’ve heard of my move, or you’d heard and wondered why you weren’t invited to the Bon Voyage party at the Lone Palm, now you know: there was no party. Why, not only was there no party, I didn’t so much as tweet about my move, either (surely the graver affront to my tech-savvy friends)! That’s right, when that last cardboard box was packed and sealed, I slipped out of San Francisco with all the stealth of a cat burglar and have been living in Friendsville, TN ever since…

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