Making It

I hate goodbyes. Hate leaving those I love. To go to Hawaii, I say goodbye to my kids. To go back to Bellevue, I say goodbye to Surfer Ty. To go on book tours and business trips, I say goodbye to everyone. At writer conferences, I say goodbye to my friends. Enough with the goodbyes. Enough with leaving and departing and closing doors and walking away. I just want to get everybody I love in one place and lock the doors and make ’em stay.

And so here I sit at the airport in an internet cafe writing a JaneBlog to keep from falling apart. I’ll see Ty in nineteen days I tell myself. He’s going to come to the mainland and visit and catch the kids soccer and football games. I’ll see him and I’ll have a long weekend with him and it’ll be okay.

But then he’ll leave.

I’m going to have to distract myself better, add some tunes to my blogging. I’ve grabbed my iPod and am going for my special ‘high school mix’ which is heavy on ELO, Journey, Kansas, Doobie Brothers, and Supertramp. I’m cranking the music loud because I’m going to feel okay about this leaving thing even if it means playing Evil Woman over and over at full volumne. Leaving is just part of life. It’s called detaching. It’s called sucking up it up and doing what needs to be done.

Or not. I could just cry. I’ve done it my whole life. I’m the biggest weenie out there. In jr high I used to cry at those James Gardner Kodak commericals. Waaaaah. I nearly cried at a new Coke commerical I saw at the movie theater at Ward Center here in Honolulu. It wasn’t even sad but somehow it touched me.

I embarrass myself routinely. I’m not the cool, tough funny chick I’d like to be. Instead of JP, people should call me SP, Sappy Pants.

I’ve fifteen minutes before they start boarding my flight which means I will think I have to go pee at least three more times. And then once I’m on board. I have so many issues, starting with my peanut bladder and not ending with my inability to sit still for long periods of time.

But flying is how I get around. It’s what takes me from here to there, gets me across the ocean, makes the world smaller, friendlier. And now they’re calling my flight, boarding first class. I better go. Time to head back, home to my other life. The one with children but without the man.

People think its cool that I get to have these two lives. And it is cool, until my Ty drops me off at the Honolulu airport and my heart just falls, falls so far and fast that I can’t catch my breath. It’s hell letting go of him. Saying those last few words. Hello, goodbye, I love you, remember me.

And then when he drives away I sometimes stand a moment too long on the curb watching him go and it reduces me to tears.

Which is particularly fitting right now as Journey’s, ‘Who’s Crying Now’ is playing.

Who’s Crying Now?

Uh, that would be me.