Long Kiss Goodbye to Nassau

Our very first post on this blog is titled Long Kiss Goodbye to the Bay and was written a bit more than 4 years ago.  Wow has a lot happened since then in our lives and in the world.  We have been kissing goodbye to Nassau now for over a month, in a long kiss that seems both similar and vastly different than the one we enjoyed with San Francisco four years ago.  My last day in the Bahamas is Thursday, Sept 1^st, and then it is on to DC.

So, we have been very quiet on the blog front since Muriel completed her impressive project of blogging each week of Elle’s first year.  Some of that silence is intentional, we wanted to step back and think about what this blog would be moving forward.  Spoiler alert, we don’t have a good answer to that just yet.

But some if it was also being super busy with a lot going on in our lives.  Muriel has moved on to a new job, as a Foreign Service Attorney for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  This job is within their General Counsel office and is such a great fit for her interest and passions.  She has been there just short of a month and has been really enjoying settling into the role.  It means we will both be diplomats moving forward and will have to navigate our future assignments in tandem.  That is a challenge we welcome, and I am so proud of her for getting this great job.  It was sad to leave the Center for International Environmental Law and all that she had help build in her time there, of course.  But this was a career move for a dream job.

As part of her new job, Muriel and elle left the Bahamas more than a month before my last day.  So we have been using Facetime a ton and she has been solo parenting up there.  Tough on both of us, but Elle has been unfazed by all the changes and is doing better than ever.  She takes after her mom in resiliency.

So that means that we will be going together to Ethiopia sometime next summer.  The exact dates are still being hashed out, but we will be working together out of that embassy.  Working in the same embassy means that this will be the first time that our work lives have intersected in the slightest in the 10 years we have been together.  Super cool.  

Back to the long kiss to the Bahamas.  It is sad to be leaving but because we knew when we would be leaving before we arrived, it doesn’t have the same poignancy as our departure from the Bay, or even from Duke.  Your life is kind of on the clock the moment you arrive, and it is up to you to craft a life and build meaningful relationships.  Both of which we did, but knowing you are departing does put a bit of damper on your feeling of permanence.  2 years feels like a long time, we have lived many places for a shorter period, but it also feels short.

So how I have I been saying goodbye?

It has been a mix of lists - to do lists.  People to say goodbye to, things that I need to do at work, places I want to enjoy one more time, things I need to do at home to move.  A mix of life and work.  Due to life, I won’t get everything done on any of these lists.  But I will get close, and that is good enough.