The First of the Lasts

I had my last massage yesterday. One of the nice things I do for myself, if I'm going to sit at a keyboard all day, is to get an upper back massage. I've managed it about every three weeks since we've been here with a wonderful woman named Claire. She's a local gal and even she says this summer has been dreadful. As you may well guess, I am looking forward to my last tango with The Beast, but that's not for a while yet. And may well be another story. But I digress. I had been expecting this first of the lasts to be difficult, a feeling of the beginning of the end. Surprisingly, it wasn't. We hugged and smiled and said we'd see each other in April.

With one down, and all the other lasts coming up in the next couple of weeks, I am approaching them with high hopes that they will be met with this same aplomb and none of the melancholy that I was expecting, with anticipation for the next time around and high hopes of maintaining the peace of mind and sense of balance I've found in my time here. I can't say that chucking it all and abandoning family (as has been implied by those who shall remain nameless) and friends for a not so foreign land is for everyone, but coming on the heels of the year we had before we got here, it was exactly the thing I needed. There has definitely been an element of putting my head in the sand, especially in regard to the political scene at home, but it all went on without me whether I was paying attention or not. I've survived the hole in my heart that having my kids so far away created, and they survived us being gone. I've survived six months of golf stories and we are, if anything, better friends than we were before. So next time you think about chucking it all for the simple life, go ahead and do it. It's brilliant.