The Art of Losing

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-Elizabeth Bishop

This poem describes my day today, how I'm feeling at this moment.
I'm moving home at Thanksgiving. Found out on Monday for sure, and this whole week has been happy and sad, but mostly sad. It's hard to explain. It's hard to explain how I can be so sad to leave a place I have been so anxious to move from. Or, I thought I was. Once I found out that the new nanny, Becca, was for sure taking the job we offered her and moving here, it was like what I had wanted had come true, but all the sudden I wasn't ready for it anymore. You think you're ready to go, you think you can make a clean break, but when the reality of leaving in a week comes, you realize that it's just not that easy. I won't miss living with my bosses, but I will miss the quiet roar that comes with living with my two loves, Reily and Owen. I won't miss the insane drivers, and the road rager they make me become, but I will miss the New England landscape I have the priviledge to view every day on the way to Reily's school. I won't miss the constant metropolis with no countryside in sight, but I will miss the option of heading down to Manhattan, the proverbial "center of the world" whenever I want. I won't miss the loneliness that comes with living so far from my two best friends, but I will miss all those things I got involved in to fend off that loneliness--the watercolor painting class, the choir, the bible studyamd the friends I made there in the all ages of church women that became my mentors. Ahhh life as a 20-something. You get what you wanted only to find out that it's not so easy. Moving is never easy, even if it's right. Leaving is never simple, even if you are moving towards God's plan for you. Just because it's Iowa doesn't mean that I'm any less terrifed! But I have to laugh, because you know what? I WAS terrified of moving here, and I made it. I made friends, I found fun, I discovered things about myself and God that I never would have known. So, although it's scary to embark on this next step, I have a confidence that comes with the knowledge that changes like this are going to keep happening throughout my whole life, and they'll probably never get easier. Like the poem, I'm losing a part of my life, I'm losing New York. There will be other cities to lose, friends to lose, and things to lose. But it's no disaster. :)
Love you all
christina