Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye has been hard this week. Everyone has wanted to see us. Lots of friends seemed caught by surprise that we were actually leaving. I was one of those people. We have been planning this 'new life' for almost two years, and suddenly it was in the final stages and we were leaving a home and town that we had been part of for almost 20 years.



Drake and I have both been saying goodbye, but I have more people connections that he has and thus I've been saying goodbye over and over again. It started me thinking about when we say goodbye and how we say goodbye and what it means. It has quickly become apparent that 'goodbye' in the 21st century is much less final than it used to be. I'm in the Hill Country of Texas now, the birthplace of the state. In 1840 a woman who said 'goodbye' to her friends and family to come to the Hill Country actually meant: "The odd are I'll never see you again." Can you imagine, never actually seeing your family and friends once you said 'goodbye'? Our 19th century woman's future communication with that family and those friends was certainly spotty with little or no postal service. Yes, to a pioneer woman, 'goodbye' was pretty final. It's little wonder that railroads had the same impact in the 19th and early 20th century that computers have had today.



In most of the 20th century telephones eased those 'goodbyes'. Remember Ma Bell? For your younger readers, AT&T had a monopoly on all the telephone service in the entire country, and thus, controlled the price of long distance telephone calls. I can remember that the ONLY time you actually called anybody long distance was when someone was born or someone died. It eased a little bit as I got into young adulthood, but to talk 'long distance' was not something you did without prior planning. It was cheaper to talk after 7 pm or on the weekends. I knew some people who made lists of what they needed to say when they called so they could minimize their long distance minutes. My personal goal was to stay under $100 dollars a month in long distance charges. However, expensive or not, saying goodbye and moving away got easier because you could always call. When the AT&T monopoly was broken, I don't think anyone envisioned being able to talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime. The whole concept of 'long distance' just vanished almost overnight.



I'm not sure I could vagabond if I couldn't take my friends with me electronically. It's almost a touchstone among people who aren't using electronics that a virtual community is not real community. I think that's wrong, and this vagabonding exercise is going to prove it. I don't think my friends are going to stop reading these blogs. I don't think anyone will stop answering my phone calls or emails. No one has to become a name on a xmas card list that you heard from once a year.



Even so, it was hard to say goodbye. However, now that I'm actually physically gone - it's getting exciting! Time to say hello to this new lifestyle. I've been joking that we are now officially homeless, and one friend emailed back, "No, officially FREE. I think, perhaps, she's right.