PenPenWrites

A year ago, I was filled with the warring emotions of sadness and joy. Joy that Alpha daughter was leaving on a great adventure: She and her family–one of my Grands and my son-in-law–would be living in Berlin for a year. What an opportunity. What an eye-opening challenge for my Grand who was then eight years old.

But sadness: They would be gone for a year–an ocean and many time zones away. As I wrote at the time, I felt the pain in parting. A friend whose daughter lived in Israel with her first grandchild said I could cheer myself up with visits–which I did, one with Paterfamilias and one by myself, which had satisfactions of a very singular kind, as I posted this winter. And then there was Skype and more Skype to make a connection feel like a real drop-in visit.

And now, Alpha Daughter returns in a few days. She'll move back to her house in a city that is only a few hundred miles from us.  I am filled with warring emotions again. The joy is in the return–she and her family will be in the same time zone as we are. We still won't be able to drop in whenever we want but visits will be much easier to do and more frequent.

But I feel a sadness as well. The adventure is over. Yes, it was her adventure not mine, but there were vicarious thrills for me: hearing about the friends she made, the colleagues she got to know, the trips to Paris and Prague, the little and big adjustments to life in another city and another language. The fun of learning German sayings. We ended our Skype talks with a cheery 'tschuss' rather than 'bye.'

So there it is. That cheery Tschuss is now a fond and final sigh of 'auf Wiedersehen.'