Summer Solstice Moon
In the decompression zone. Visits from family, any family, are occasions for renewal of ties and creation of new memories. Further sticky material for the mysterious field that defines often faraway people as belonging to each other. Both Mark and the Denver Olsons were here this last week. Now they’re both gone.
Introverts like Kate and I have a doubled experience each time. That is, we greet visitors and embrace them, eager to hear the latest news and have some new experiences together; but, too, we find our quiet and our routine disrupted. Even our physical space. That creates a tension, overlaid by the unusual such as cooking for 8, getting a driver’s license test, building bonfires, navigating to new destinations.
That means leave taking has a doubled sense, too. Sadness at good-bye, but also relief as the quiet returns and the day’s rhythms return to their norm. Of course, feeling relief when loved ones go can generate guilt, but for introverts that guilt has to be parsed with the knife of one’s true nature. Sadness is just that, sadness. And relief, well, that just means we are who we are.