I am sitting at my local coffee shop (Coffee Tree Roasters on Walnut) and mostly looking out the window as the sun comes up. I’d come down here early in the morning intent on adding a page or two to E________ when it occurred to me that, in all likelihood, I will never write here again – certainly not regularly. My day job’s much- threatened transfer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Edinburgh, Scotland is finally happening. Tomorrow, I drive the cats to Washington, D.C. to meet the people who will acclimate them to their cargo crates but fail to explain important concepts like aircraft, jet lag, or mice with Scottish accents. That job done, I will board a flight at Dulles and return to the land of my birth.
I’ve been away for 23 years and although I’ve visited regularly, living there again is going to be a completely different experience. I have so much to learn. What the heck is Sky Atlantic when it’s at home? Why is the paper money made of plastic? Where is the sun? It’s going to be an adjustment.
Like my mother, sisters and child, I was born on a Thursday. According to the old rhyme, Thursday’s child has far to go, and our family’s Thursday-born have certainly lived up to the prophecy. I am not a hundred percent certain I could recite all the places I have lived at this point. Leaving somewhere is miserable. You make friends, you get to know your way around, you feel . . . settled.
But arriving somewhere is exciting. A new adventure awaits. There will be new people to meet, new sights to see, new stories to hear and, of course, new stories to tell. I will need to find a new coffee shop, though.
When I got here this morning, I gave the barista my usual order. I didn’t tell her it was to go because that would have made no sense: I was staying to write, after all. Nor did I tell her that this would be my last time here: like all my family’s Thursday-born, I hate goodbyes.
I did, however, leave a ridiculous tip. I hope it’s enough.