Guacamayas & Goodbyes
Do you ever have days where you are just sad? Where you question everything and wonder why you chose to live this life? Where maybe you've been waiting for doors to open but they just don't seem to? Where your resilience feels low and tears are right at the surface? For some reason they always seem to come right when I'm about to give a talk to students or staff or parents about the life we live. Today is no different. Another day to talk to those in my community about the never ending cycle of goodbyes. It brings to mind another time quite a few years ago when my son was having to say a sudden goodbye to his first friend.
My son's first friend was Korean. They were the only foreigners in their class and neither of them had Spanish as their first language, but it was their only shared language. So these 2-3 year olds would play together in the bits of the language they shared. They would lay on the ground and drop Goldfish crackers into their mouth and say "Se calló" ("it fell") and laugh hysterically. They knew each other's favorite songs and held hands when they would run around and play.
I had become good friends with her mom. This was the kind of friend who is rare. Though we come from two different cultures, it was so easy to be together. We laughed, played together with our kids and shared our lives. Then one day she told me that the company her husband worked for was sending all their foreign workers out of the country and they would be moving away in 2 weeks. I was crushed. Not only would my son be saying goodbye to his first friend but I would be saying goodbye too and I just didn't want to.
We talked with our son about his friend moving away and worked together to buy a gift for her that he thought would be special. You see since he was still learning Spanish, oftentimes at his age he just enjoyed making silly sounds, in particular guacamaya (parrot) sounds. So what did he want to buy her? A pen shaped like a guacamaya and we printed a picture of the two of them together and wrote a note on it.
Their last day at school together came. We gathered the gifts and I drove my son to school. As soon as my son handed his friend the pen, he made the guacamaya sound, she smiled and then they both giggled. Then off they ran arm and arm to school. I stood there next to my friend watching this sweetest of goodbyes and realized that we would have to say goodbye soon too and my heart broke.
As I drove away I began to cry and couldn't stop. It had been 7/8 years of saying goodbyes and I don't think I had cried once before this. But that moment they all came crashing in.
That afternoon as I was leading the RAFTing assemblies at school for the students, I sat in a smaller group with those who were staying as those who were leaving met in another room. As I sat with that group of staying students and we discussed the impact of goodbyes on us, I asked them, "How do we do this?" Amongst those long-term Stayers, a few who had been there since kindergarten, were some who said they were done with making new friends and saying goodbyes. But another stayer student, who was always welcoming to each new student and teacher, said that when someone leaves, they say goodbye, go home, and let themselves cry. This struck me as such wisdom coming from a 14 year old. She said so simply, something that I had failed to do all my previous years of goodbyes - grieve.
And though I do not like having to give talks about transition when I myself am in a difficult season of wrestling with transition, I often find that these moments help to teach me new things and reveal to me why talking about this topic is both hard and good.