n the first day of kindergarten, I wept. No, I wailed. I clung to my mother's skirt with little sweaty fists -- I wasn't letting go of that sucker. Of course, I had to let go eventually. When one is so young, one doesn't have much of a choice -- especially when one's little sweaty palms are confronted with the new acrylic nails of one's suprisingly strong kindergarten teacher.
But here is the lesson: I want to cling. I'm a clinger. I'm made for clinging.
And I'm always, always having to say goodbye.
In Austin, I was stuck in one place while my friends drifted one by one to bigger, better cities. Here, nothing sticks. It's always the same -- you meet someone, share some dessert, get cozy, and then it's "vaya con dios" and all that business. Some you will miss, most you won't. Some you will write, most you won't. They're just people passing through, stories to skim, comfort food. But every once in a great while, I meet someone I can't imagine not knowing. How did I live all these years not knowing them? And then, I can't seem to dig my fingernails out of their arms.
Kim is like that. She is my friend from Holland, from the Spanish School, from my travels. We met again in Quito last week, and this morning, I left her at the airport to return to Holland, where she starts a new job on Monday.
"I'll visit you," I say, and of course I mean it. But I'm not rich, and Holland is not cheap.
"Knock it off," she says, tapping on the table. She says this instead of "Knock on wood," and I think it's so cute that I can't correct her, like when she says "I have chicken skin" instead of "I have goosebumps."
"Te extrañare," we both say: I will miss you. A familiar phrase now.
I hail a taxi back to my hotel. Oh boy, I think, I'm no good at this. Don't you people know that? I drive back to the home that isn't home, alone in South America again, feeling so lucky to know you all, but wondering why, why you have to be in so many places at once.