Movements

Dessi, Francie (the cat) and I are leaving Dakar tonight for three months. The flight is at 10:40 -- Paris, Salt Lake, then Whitefish, Montana! My carry-on is stuffed with puzzle cubes, bracelets, sparkly crayons and snack food, all in separate bags for little surprises. I figure this will kill 2.25 hours, all told. Leaving us with ... a 12-hour finger-puppet show. I remember the first time I flew with Dessi -- I brought not one book but two ... for myself! I now laugh out loud at such delusions.

The hardest part will be leaving Eric; he won't be joining us for five weeks! Dessi is so happy when we're all three together; her favorite thing to to point and say, "Mama, Daddy! Mama, Daddy! Daddy, Mama!" Like she just wants to make SURE we appreciate just how fabulous it all is. So, we're bringing lots of daddy pictures and trying to get our Skype video monitor function to work so they can see each other every night. I think it will be okay, at least for her -- it's me who will suffer the most!

The hardest, hardest part will be leaving our great friends Emilia and Vasso. Vasso will have moved to Tel Aviv when I get back in September, and Emilia will probably have moved as well. This is the difficulty of expat life. Everyone moves every two to four years. The good part is that you have friends all over the world, and the fabulous part is the gift of connecting so intensely with such incredible people, even for such a short time.

But now on this last afternoon here, with my bags packed and waiting at the door, and after goodbye lunches and dinners and a late-night party of drinking absinthe and throwing each other into the pool ... I am acutely aware of all we're leaving behind.