On Hellos & Goodbyes

 

I'm sitting on the edge of a season of incredible transition, where I'm looking out into it with both all of the grief of leaving behind things that really matter to me and, at the same time, all of the beautiful things that will be new ahead.  Readers in this space aren't surprised by my sentimentality here; I'm such a deep feeler of all of the things, so even as I embark on a new adventure, I am sad to leave the old behind.

Scott and I have lived what feels like a lifetime of hellos and goodbyes in our 19 years together and 11 years of marriage; we've lived in the midst of transition almost more than we haven't.  We've said goodbye to people and places we have loved in the name of school, of work, of opportunity, of marriage.  We've said hello to new people and new places that we thought would be more permanent only to find that they weren't.  

I suppose I should have known our life would be filled with endings and beginnings when we chose to date long distance. We met in April of 2006 after spending most of a semester in math class together but not really getting a chance to meet until almost the end of the year.  Scott was getting ready to graduate from Hoggard High School to begin his next chapter at UNC Wilmington where he was dedicated to pursuing a pre-dental track to get into dental school; he wanted no distractions, especially not a girlfriend.  And I was getting ready to leave myself-- as a sophomore in high school, I had been accepted into a competitive public boarding school program at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and was to head off to Durham (2.5 hours from Wilmington) that fall.  I wasn't exactly looking to start a relationship with someone either at the time, especially a long distance one.  But by June, we had decided to trial dating each other, knowing that come August, we would be saying a difficult goodbye.  2.5 hours doesn't seem that long of a distance, but we both knew we were heading into very challenging school environments, and I wouldn’t be allowed to have a car at school. I would be completely dependent on someone coming to pick me up anytime I wanted to go home to Wilmington.

The goodbyes were never easy; we decided to trial the long-distance thing, and I cried most days when it was time to head back to school.  We continued for 8 years of difficult goodbyes, always made sweeter by the time we could actually spend together, however brief; the distance became even greater when Scott was accepted to Indiana University's dental school and a 2.5 hour drive became a 13 hour one.  Our times of seeing one another were less frequent, sometimes stretching for 4-5 months instead of just 1-2 months.  Those goodbyes were even harder, but we muddled through them until Scott proposed in March 2013.  Suddenly, I wasn't going to be saying goodbye to him anymore; I'd be moving to Indianapolis, away from all of my family and friends, and I would be starting a life in the same home as him.  The next goodbyes that would come would be those to everyone I knew and loved besides my future husband.

From there, we entered many seasons of transition.  From starting graduate school to moving to Columbus together, changing jobs several times, and ending seasons we thought we'd live in forever.  During the pandemic, we chose to move back to North Carolina.  We had always thought of moving back to North Carolina as something for "someday," but during a season of total isolation in the pandemic, someday felt like it was upon us sooner than we had expected. 

One thing I should mention about how I feel about goodbyes in general is that I hate them.  I claim it’s due to the Irish blood from my father’s mother that runs in my veins, but I much prefer the Irish farewell or exit in almost any setting.  If you’re unfamiliar, an Irish farewell is when you leave without saying goodbye.  Apparently it can also be known as a French leave, which I did not know until I was looking up how to define this. When Scott and I are at parties, I hate saying goodbye.  I would much rather just slip out unnoticed and not make a big deal out of our leaving.  As a middle and high schooler at sleepovers, I was always awake hours before any of the other girls.  Most of my peers would sleep until 10 or 11, but I was always awake at 6 or 7 sitting with their parents while they had coffee in the kitchen; I would often just call my mom to come get me early so I didn’t have to wait around for hours for everyone else to awaken only to say goodbye.  Spare me— just let me slip out unnoticed anytime I can. 

One of the worst goodbyes I can remember was when my mom and sister dropped me off at NCSSM (my public boarding school) after helping me decorate and unpack my dorm room there.  I remember standing at the end of the hallway of 2nd Bryan as they prepared to leave; my sister and I both cry when we say goodbye to people and things, and she was almost inconsolable that day.  My mom’s voice started breaking as she said “we’ll see you soon,” and I went back to my room, excited as I was by all of the newness of this adventure, and wept until I had no tears left.  What was I thinking living so far from home? I was trapped now, with no way to get home without a car; seeing my family for Labor Day felt like it was so far away.  I think that this goodbye cemented my desire for Irish farewells in all aspects of my life. 

As we prepare to say hello to a new season of life, I’ve been plagued with the decisions over childcare and whether to continue juggling two part-time/PRN jobs with a child.  One thing that makes goodbyes hard for me is that I am fiercely loyal to not only friends and family but to companies as well.  My résumé doesn’t always reflect this due to the many moves that we’ve made over the years, but once I am in a settled place, I put up with a lot more than most people would at jobs before I hit my breaking point to leave.  

I’ve worked at my palliative care job since May 2021 when we finally made a decision to plant roots in Asheville after realizing the dental practice that Scott wanted to purchase closer to our families wasn’t working out for various reasons.  Truthfully, I have loved the work but struggled with balance in the role almost since the beginning. Over time, I’ve gradually cut back my hours after many tearful conversations with Scott who has been such a supporter of me pursuing multiple passions at once.  He has supported me in pursuing writing alongside clinical work since 2019 (both academic and personal writing ventures) and has always supported my desire to work towards teaching in nursing, a dream I am still considering but that doesn’t seem to fit into the next season of life quite yet. When three days per week part-time was still more like working regular full-time hours (at least it wasn’t overtime which is what I felt like I was doing when I was full-time) by the time all documentation and follow-up was done, I stepped back even further into a role of once per month PRN.  We were also navigating a season of loss at that time where I was seeing a fertility specialist after three miscarriages and lots of procedures to work up what was going on;  we knew my health needed to be at the forefront for that season and that work needed to not be so large of a role.  We were lucky to be able to make adjustments to our budget and shuffle things around to allow this, and I don’t take it for granted that we had the ability to do that after I carried our family financially through Scott’s dental schooling.

I now work a second PRN job that seemed like a great fit for my current skill set with my lifestyle medicine certification; I work with Buncombe County Employee Health remotely as a provider who counsels patients on lifestyle changes and wellness after their annual health risk assessments for their insurance. I get the opportunity to talk about plant-based eating, moving your body, etc every day with employees of the county.  This role is seasonal work and the schedule is incredibly flexible; most weeks I work 2-3 half days per week but I can flex as much as I want or need to.

When I was in early pregnancy, several friends terrified me into putting our name on waitlists for preschools and daycares.  They offered many opinions about this, clearly stemming from their own difficult experiences with finding childcare in their respective areas, but it was daunting for me.  It sounded as though I should have been on a wait list from the day I got pregnant based on what they said.  This was hard for someone who had lost five babies and had to deal with unsubscribing from pregnancy-related e-mails every time or deleting the apps that were tracking my pregnancy that was now over. How could I do something like put us on a waitlist somewhere only to have to report that we had lost that child yet again? 

Another piece of this, and I can see this now, is that well-intentioned friends were projecting their needs and experiences onto me with this advice, and while it was entirely unintentional on their parts, it caused a lot of anxiety in our home that turned out to be unnecessary.  One day I spent a whole day calling local daycares to get information only to find out that there was really no cause for alarm for where we lived; several daycares were so kind and offered me tours, and in the next sentence said, “just call us when he’s born and we’ll get him in.”  Living outside of Asheville proper, in our smaller town, thankfully, allowed us to navigate a different childcare experience than my friends had to endure in the competitive city of Asheville. Scott asked me why I had made a spreadsheet of daycares and spent so much time calling places when we didn’t really need full-time daycare.  It brought me back down to reality in a really helpful way. 

Scott and I had discussed years ago that when we were finally able to have children, we would prioritize caring for them over careers, at least as best we could.  Scott had planned to push really hard at work in the years before kids so that he could have a more laid back, typical 4 day a week dental schedule once we had children.  This meant that he was working not only 5 day weeks during the past few years, something very atypical for dentists due to the physically demanding nature of their surgeries and work, but he was actually working incredibly long days where he sometimes had surgeries causing him to go into work at 6AM.  We had already decided that I would not work full-time as I wanted to prioritize raising our children and spending time with them; if I could find a flexible NP role or writing role, I would do that, but we planned for and knew that a time was coming when I would not be working full-time or even likely part-time.  I was prepared to shed this “career woman” identity that many American woman carry, prepared to accept that I could do it all, but I didn’t want to.  I am so grateful for what the Women’s Rights Movement brought for women in the United States, but also, sometimes it feels like it created a new problem of women trying to do it all by caring for their families and working full-time outside of the home.  I’m not ungrateful for the opportunities afforded by the movement, but maybe all women don’t want to try to live a harried life of working 8-5 and then caffeinating on the way home to be fully present for their kids. I want my children to have a less fractured version of me who is present in their lives in an authentic way. 

That leads us to my most recent goodbye, which in some ways has been a long time coming and, in many respects, has been the longest goodbye I’ve ever said.  Two weeks ago I put in my 90 day notice at my palliative care job, and it felt like the end of an era for me. I’ve worked since I was 15 years old, showing up to my first job at Smithfield’s Chicken and BBQ with my old lady, non-slip shoes and orange baseball cap that I was required to wear on the job.  I worked various jobs throughout college to support myself, including buying back textbooks at the UNC Student Store, teaching a 2 year old class at Methodist church on Franklin Street, and eventually procuring a job at UNC Hospital as a CNA where I would work weekends throughout the rest of nursing school. 

It’s the end of an era of a job where I do work that I feel is so important but also feel so exhausted by, a job where I have great colleagues who are in the trenches together with one another in this difficult work, and a job that I find deep value and meaning in yet cannot make it fit into this next season of life. This job will end during my maternity leave, meaning I have two shifts left of this work before I am hanging up my hat for a season.  When they announced at my all-team meeting last week that I was leaving to “stay home” with my baby, I cringed.  There is nothing wrong with this, though I don’t think it entirely reflects what I am doing.  I am keeping my other job with the county due to its flexibility and seasonal nature, which means that following maternity leave I will not really be needed much at that role until January.  This will allow us time to find a better childcare situation that fits our needs.  We don’t actually need full-time daycare, even though I felt pressured to put Josiah’s name on lists for that after the panic induced by conversations with friends.  What we hope for is in-home care for a few half days per week, days where I can schedule breaks between patients to feed and play with Josiah, days where I can finish and go on a walk with him and the dogs.  This is not everyone’s reality and I am so aware of it, but it is more aligned with our life and the season ahead, and I think I’m so ready to say hello to all of that.  

I am so grateful for the changing of seasons in our lives as much as in the weather outside, that we can pursue passions for a period of time and then step away from them for awhile, knowing that we can always come back someday.  It’s also freeing to imagine possibility in other opportunities that could come, as I imagine incredible transformation ahead in motherhood but also in prioritizing different needs in our home.  So while it is a goodbye that has been hard, there is also a hello on the other side of it that is most certainly welcome.