Hasta Luego...

A quick note before we dive in: I hope all of you currently affected by snow, ICE, power outages or other menacing phenomena are safe and well! Reading the news from afar it seems like quite a lot is going on at the moment. 

Anyway. So Hasta Luego is a phrase they use all the time in Spain to say goodbye. It means roughly "see you later." (Literally: "until then/later.") But the Spanish will use it for goodbyes even when it's unlikely you will ever see them again. It just sounds nicer: like they're already looking forward to the next time they'll get to share your delightful company, even if they are a taxi driver who just took you to the airport.

As it happens, my wife and I are on the cusp of needing to say a whole lot of "Hasta Luegos" to people we really care about. But we're not exactly sure when Luego will be. It could be a long time from now.

Facing hard goodbyes is wrenching, and we hate it. But we're mature adults, so we know exactly how to handle it:

We're just pretending it's not actually happening.

Anyone got any better ideas? How do you all cope when you become fond of people, and then end up living very very far away from them?  My wife and I have been doing various versions of this for our entire 35 years together, so you'd think we'd be better at it by now.

So What's With All the "See You Later's?"

If you're not a regular reader, the deal is that we've been living half-time in Valencia, Spain for roughly the last four years. After Trump got elected the first time, we decided we wanted to work up a Plan B for the future in case something unthinkable like that ever happened again. Well, guess what? All of a sudden  Plan B started seeming like it could end up being Plan A.

But there was no need to choose right away, and we loved having these two very different lives. 

Now though, we've reached a point, primarily for medical reasons but others as well, where the frequent back-and-forth is just not working. We need to choose one country to live in, and one to visit every now and then. (And yes, we know we are incredibly fortunate to have these options).

In our opinion, Spain is a much better country than the U.S. in so many important ways. Yet now that we are forced to choose, it looks like we are choosing the U.S. instead.  

Our friends here think we are insane, and they are right. The United States is currently at the mercy of a narcicisstic madman with the intelligence of a rotting turnip; innocent protesters are being shot in the streets; and those in charge seem intent on destroying everything that was ever good about our country. While there is spirited resistance in some quarters, the cowardly capitulation of the mainstream press, the legislative branch, the supreme court, business leaders, and half the population too busy posing for instagram pictures to notice what is happening, all give us grave doubts about the country's future.

And yet: for us, America is home, and Spain is not. Our reasons for feeling this way are complicated and intellectually indefensible. (More on this in a future post. Not because you're going to want to read about it, but because I'm going to want to write about it).

So we are pinning our hopes on an ever-growing resistance movement, a big blue wave in the midterms, and some sort of semblance of sanity returning. 

The plan is to leave Valencia in a couple of weeks. And we're not sure when we will return. However, we're not going so far as to sell our flat and abandon our hard-won Spanish resident visa. We'd still like to hold on to Plan B as long as we can.

Further complicating things, we will also be moving from the enchanting Provincetown, Massachusetts, to the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego, California. They are both awesome places to live, but one has Winter, and the other does not. Also one is close to everything we need, and the other is located at the Far Remote End of the World. With our medical needs and weather wimpiness, it's not a practical place to spend our last couple of decades.

Problem is, we can't figure out how to take all of the incredibly wonderful people we've become close to in both Valencia and Provincetown to San Diego with us! Last we checked, kidnapping was still a felony, plus, checking so much extra luggage with our friends stuffed inside would be quite costly.

So it looks like we have a double set of really tough "hasta luegos" coming up.

We try to console ourselves with a few things:

In this modern age, it's much easier to keep in touch with distant friends and relatives. We've done this before: up and moved, and still stayed close. We text friends and family all the time. And if there was one thing the pandemic was good for, it taught us that video calls can feel almost like "real life." You just have to actively schedule them, just like you would a dinner date, but without having to negotiate over gluten-free or vegan menu choices. We are going to be good about this.

And while we won't be able to spend months away from home like we used to, we can still travel. We WILL go visit the places and people who mean so much to us.

Also, moving farther away from some dear friends in Spain and on the East Coast puts us closer to other dear friends on the West Coast, as well as family members, whom we haven't been able to visit nearly enough in the past.

Finally, we have the "pretend it isn't really happening" strategy! Our plans are provisional, and could change. We are not selling our Spain apartment yet, and it will take a while to sell our Provincetown condo. This means that we can live in a fantasy "maybe we'll see you soon!" world where we get to be in all places at once, and live close to all of our friends, and enjoy some of the world's most idyllic neighborhoods, if only in our own delusional minds.

How about you all, have any of you had to say some hard "See you laters?" Do you stay in touch with distant friends and family?

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