It's Not Goodbye; It's Till We Meet Again
Deconstructing My Patterns pt. 3
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Scene: I’m digging a hole. I’m crouched close to the ground, my dark hair creating a curtain around most of my face. I’m four years old. Maybe five.
It’s recess time.
I don’t typically enjoy recess. I don’t play on the swings. I don’t run around and chase the other children. Even at five, I was preserving my energy. I’ve never been a runner.
There I am, minding my own business, digging my little sand pit with a twig, when someone joins me. Not a teacher. Not the suspiciously elderly recess lady assigned to watch us, either. It’s another kid. It’s a boy.
Being the shy, introvert that I don’t yet realize I am as a Kindergartner, I say nothing. Ignore him…maybe he will go away? He doesn’t. As a stress response, I dig into my half of the sand pit more vigorously- my way of asserting dominance, and silently signaling him to BACK OFF. He doesn’t.
I must have realized that this sand-pit-swiper was planning to stick around because I eventually DID look over at him to identify the culprit. He had dark hair and glasses. I recognized him from my classroom. I did not know his name, but I am not necessarily intrigued…I’m perturbed.
The bell rings and the recess lady waits about 6 seconds before blowing her whistle to rally everyone back to class. We live in Michigan and it’s pretty chilly. Winter must have been showing her cards.
Typically, when I hear the bell, I am already AT THE DOOR waiting to be let back to my spot in our classroom. Today, I’m sussing out this child who believes he can steal MY sand??
I don’t leave. I stay, right next to my sand pit, twig tool in hand, silent. I’m not looking at the boy, rather, down at the ground, but his shoes out of the corner of my eye, tell me that he’s still there.
Ancient Recess Lady blows her whistle again, yelling directly at us this time: “KAYLEN AND MICHAEL, INSIDE. NOW!!!!”
Terrified, having never been the target of discipline at school before, I drop my twig and hustle back towards the door to my classroom. Michael is at my heels. I look back at him, and he smiles. I don’t remember a lot from being little. I do remember meeting Michael.
We were friends from Kinder up until I moved away, halfway through third grade.
I remember my mom came to school on Moving Day to pick me up. My teacher lined up all my classmates to give me a high-five, or a goodbye hug. We were moving from Michigan to California prior to the social media era, so- this was goodbye for good.
I made my way down the line, clapping fives, bumping fists, and giving some hugs. I didn’t care about any of these bitches children- I wouldn’t miss them! By third grade I was less shy- but definitely still reserved.
Then, last in line, next to my teacher- who I clearly adored right to the depths of my subconscious- I cannot for the life of me- recall her name- or anything about her besides the fact that I know it was a “her”…anyway- next to Mrs. Her, was Michael.
I hault. Well, shit. I didn’t realize I would also be leaving my best friend. I felt my throat tighten. My eyes started stinging. I didn’t want to cry- I was 8 years old! This was third grade! It would be too baby-ish to break down.
I gave Michael a hug, but I didn’t say goodbye. As I walked down the hallway with my mom, I let the water balloon-sized tears steamroll down my cheeks. I realized only in that moment; that I would not see Michael tomorrow.
We made it to California. A small town called Nevada City. I was placed in a new class of third graders, and my teacher was a boy. Don’t recall his name but I do remember the pet snake.
I went on to make a friend. I think her name was Natalie? Not totally sure. My biggest takeaway from third grade was The Circle of Life. Everything has its time and place on Earth.
How did I learn this? The snake, of course.
Our teacher made us watch a live feeding. A mouse. Girls cried. Boys cheered. Well, most boys. One of them was so shocked by the kill, he fainted. Right there in class. Our teacher had to call 911. I remember the boy being placed on a stretcher, and our class was sent to recess. We all craned our necks through the wired fence to see the EMTs talking to our classmate. He was sitting up on the stretcher, and someone gave him juice. All was okay…ish. I don’t think my snake-feeding teacher returned to the school when I started fourth grade.
Last Wednesday, the Zoom presentation for how to register August for Transitional Kinder (this is equivalent to Pre-K, and nobody explained to us parents why the name changed), was extremely chaotic. Apparently, even though we live three blocks from an elementary school- it’s not where he will be automatically placed. It doesn’t work like that!! We will register for the district of San Diego Unified Schools, and be placed wherever we are told. How thrilling. 🙄
I really want August to have roots- to make friends - and to his benefit, he inherited his dad’s extroverted personality. Living in expensive San Diego does not come with the promise of roots. We love our current spot, but eventually, we will outgrow it. Augie won’t want to share a bedroom with us forever…right? And even if we stay put, that won’t protect him from the sting of friends moving away.
Prepping for August to begin school prompted a whisper, tickling the back of my mind. Packed several miles below sea level, I recall my own Kindergarten experience, and my first friend, Michael.
It took me many years to learn what I am.
Being an introvert has come to be understood by society in different ways. Thankfully, we are not viewed as idiots anymore (have you read Quiet, by Susan Cain??), but we are also not often recognized as great leaders because we tend to be on the quiet side. It’s always the loud ones, who reiterate the point we just made three seconds ago, in a more memorable and jubilant tone who get the credit.
And- because I am an introvert/recovering people-pleaser, I keep my circle quite small. I do this by choice, and after becoming a mother, I really have to think about my energy reserves before daring to get dressed and go play out there. This is comforting in some ways, being that I don’t get trapped into pleasing tendencies as often by random people from a large social circle. In other ways, this makes Goodbyes …well, the worst. When a friend moves away, passes away (none of you are allowed to do this until after I go), or when we drift - I’m right back in Mrs. Her’s third-grade classroom. I want to cry, and hate to realize that I won’t be able to see you “just because”, tomorrow. The hole in my heart is gaping.
I don’t worry about Augie being shy, or unable to make friends. I worry about the day he no longer wants to be my friend. Sure, for now, he wants to go to the toilet with me, but I know that time is slipping like little grains of sand through the hourglass. Soon, a social life will be more important than drawing stick-figure characters at the kitchen table. Or building a magnetic-tile-garage for Lightening McQueen together. What about when he wants to move off to college? Or Travel the world? Or live on another planet?!
That’s the goodbye that keeps me awake at night. Along with the trillion other ghosts and goblins that threaten to separate us in my mind.
I suppose as we both age, we will naturally find our way.
If you are an empty nester who has any early tips, please share!
I’ll Never, EVER, say Goodbye.
It’s “till we meet again”,
K. Alexandra
P.S. Nez Ramos [11/27/1993-03/12/2021] your light still shines across all the hearts you touched. Till we meet again. 🥀
Kaylen,
I know what it is to be left behind. Not by moving, not by choice, but by life deciding for me. My best and only friend left for a high school year in Iowa, and I stayed. Not because I wanted to, but because suddenly, I was a sibling, and wouldn’t it be a shame if I missed my brother’s first year? Canada was gone before it had ever been real.
I have lost more people than I can count—not just to distance, but to death, to decisions, to the slow erosion of connection until there was nothing left. What remains today? A threadbare tie to my one living brother, and one friendship that traces back to the sandpit. Everything else unraveled.
And yet, we adjust. We cope. And if we have truly loving people around us, they see us hurting, they see our loneliness, they feel with us—not as outsiders observing pain, but as people who know it themselves. They hold space for us, let us cry, let us be held, let us feel less alone. Not trying to fix it, not trying to explain it away, just being there. Because that’s what care looks like. That’s what appreciation feels like.
For the longest time, I thought relationship-loss meant *I* was the reason. That I was bad, wrong, unworthy, and that’s why people left. Today, I know that isn’t true. Some people don’t have the capacity to stay, not because of me, but because of where they are in their own lives. Some are tangled in their own trauma. Some see me living unapologetically and can’t bear the reflection of their own unlived life. Some leave because they need to, because the connection was never meant to last forever. And sometimes, I have to be the one to leave—because survival demands it, because an abusive or unsustainable relationship will never be worth the cost of staying.
The biggest gift isn’t in controlling how things unfold. It’s in being there when they don’t go as planned. In standing witness to the moments that hurt, instead of turning away.
I worked through an early childhood memory today. My little Judilie—four, maybe five—was bullied. Name-calling, mobbing, pushing. She was brave, she didn’t cry, she didn’t hit back, she swallowed it all. And when she came home, hoping for comfort, hoping to hear that what those kids did was not okay, she didn’t get it. No validation. No holding. No “Come here, let me take care of you.” Just, “Don’t be like that.” “Pull yourself together.” “It’s nothing.”
Except it wasn’t nothing. It never was. And I see her now, that little one, holding all that pain alone because the ones who should have seen her, didn’t.
And maybe that’s what all of this comes back to—the difference between being left behind, and being left alone.
Jay
Oh K! I wish I could hug you. Those fears are so familiar.
Also, you've made me remember my first friend - her name was Melissa and we met in kindergarten. We played Barbies together and were always teamed up because our last names were right next to each other. She moved away in 1st grade and I cried so hard I thought I'd never stop. We kept in touch, writing letters all the way through 6th grade. Once jr. high and high school came, we lost touch. I somehow ended up connecting with her when we'd turned 21, we met up at the House of Blues, danced and caught up with each other's lives, but it wasn't the same, so we said "so great to see you. Let's do this again some day." And that was our goodbye.
First friends and first loves are never forgotten, they shape us for better or worse. Same with our kiddos. I have no doubt that your boy, Augie, will love you always no matter what, no matter the miles. Cherish what you've got right now and as you grow through the good and bad, remember the littlest things that anchor you - what you're creating right now <3
Love you bigger than the sky! Xoxo