The Little Things You Notice Before You Leave

With just 15 days left before we drop off our apartment keys and catch a flight to Madrid, effectively severing our ties with this city, I’ve become strangely nostalgic for the place I’m about to leave. It’s the perfect time of year in Boston, the flowers are in full bloom, people have begun to embrace the summer, moving their lunches and dinners to outdoor patios and I’ve worn a summer dress every day this week. I feel very Carrie Bradshaw about Boston at the moment.

Tonight I noticed our calendar. It is a Edward Gory 12 month calendar, and when we bought it at the Museum of Fine Arts in January, I had planned our vacation time for the year. If I flip to July there is a week off around the 4th. Three and Four day weekends litter August and September. In October there is another week off. Around the holidays I had squeezed in planned personal days. It’s a little thing but it stopped me for a moment. We won’t need this calendar in two weeks. Our complete schedule and life plan had changed very drastically from when I marked the calendar in January. That started me thinking—what else had I noticed as we’ve prepared to leave…

Our neighbor Dave is a great guy. We met him at our yard sale and he hung out with us for four hours. He played my guitar and tried to convince people to buy more books. He struck up a conversation with Katalina from Russia and convinced her to play a song. He is a fellow traveler and lived in Guatemala, India and Costa Rica for years at a time. I wish we had met him earlier.

I’ve never been to Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket. I’ve grew up in Massachusetts and visited the Cape plenty of times. But I have never been to either island. It struck me as odd the other day when I realized it. I’m travelling across the Atlantic, but I can’t even manage a ferry ride to MV. I think I can fix this one before I go, even if it means taking the dogs with me next week.

There is more Spanish spoken in Boston than I realized. I’m sure it has something to do with my Spanish lessons and hours spent watching films in Spanish as we try to gain some fluency before we leave. It seems like everywhere we go, I hear someone speaking in Spanish. At the grocery store they don’t even make a pretense to hide the comments about customers as they gossip in Spanish. I must not look like someone who would understand it, or they just don’t care. It’s amazing to hear, and more amazing when I can pick out phrases that I know.

Most of the fruits and vegetables at the market are from far, far away. I don’t know what is wrong with apples from Massachusetts, but apparently someone thinks apples from Chile are much better. If we hadn’t decided to leave this year, I would have definitely signed up for a crop share program and gotten more local produce. It’s interesting (read: sad) that the economics work out that despite the long trip our food takes, it’s still cheaper than paying US Farmers to grow it.

This has all been way easier than I thought. I’m nearly done with my pre-trip tasks, I have two weeks to relax and things have gone very smoothly up to this point. I remember all the time I spent worrying about details, and I can’t even begin to put myself back in that place.

We’re actually going to do this. Just a little thing.