On being left behind

I recently found out that another dear friend is leaving the city. We haven't seen each other much the past several months. Children's nap schedules can conspire to do the most awful things to their mother's friendships. But with both our babies getting a little older, I was looking forward to reconnecting again as 2011 marches on. That seems unlikely now.

It's a strange sensation, this pain of being left behind. I had an inner ear infection once, my senior year of high school. It didn't hurt nearly as much as a regular ear infection, but it gave me a constant feeling of falling. My mom had to drive me everywhere for a few days because my balance was shot. It was like those dreams where you plummet off a cliff and wake up right before hitting the ground, except the ground never came, and I didn't wake up until a few days of antibiotics had the chance to kick in. This is a little like that.

It's not as if I really want to leave, myself. I spent my childhood as the one who left. We never went much of anywhere that was objectively better than the place where we had been before; the places were better because my dad's job was better, the natural progression of his career leading us around the midwest and southeast. I always say I can't live anywhere but here because I got used to changing wards and schools every few years. This is the only place where I can stay still; everything changes around me, so there's no need to go anywhere. I'd be willing to leave for a great opportunity for John, but so far it seems like the best opportunity right now is the one he's in, and if a better were to present itself, the odds are in favor of his potential new offices being within a mile of his current ones. There is, however, an ugly element of jealousy to all this leaving, if I am honest with myself. The promise of a new start, a dream job, something great waiting over the horizon of which I am not part. How selfish of me.

I am tempted to subconsciously believe that all these people who leave go somewhere I could follow. As if there were a giant suburb somewhere out there that combined Texas, Connecticut, Boston, California, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and parts unknown into one big alumni gathering of former city dwellers where the weather is perfect, our husbands are home for dinner on a regular basis, everyone lives close to their parents, and we all use our new cars to cruise town ferreting out the best cupcakes (yes, I know cupcakes are so 2007, but I'm not over them yet), the best brunch, the best shack burger substitute before living happily ever after together. I know that doesn't really exist, but sometimes it feels like we should leave, too, so we can go there.

Hardest of all, though, is the inescapable reality that each person who leaves takes a part of you with them. In this case, there's the part that took our first family photos, the part that watched my daughter when I went into labor last year, the part that held my newborn baby boy when he was just one day old, that pushed his bassinet into the light to capture his face in an innocence it will never again possess. I'm not sure how I feel about all those parts of me being scattered everywhere, all over the country, the world even. How much is there to go around? How many times can I regenerate?

Earlier this year, a member of our congregation passed away unexpectedly. A few months later, his widow spoke in fast and testimony meeting. She made a comment that touched me in a profound way. She spoke of how surprised she had been at the outpouring of support from friends long gone when they heard about her husband's death. Almost as if the tragedy had revealed invisible wires still carrying currents of trust and love, still connecting them to all their friends who had moved on over a lifetime of being left behind. We realized those friendships were still strong, that they still meant something in a moment like this, she said. She looked right at me when she said it, as if she wanted to tell me that it would be OK. I think of that again now, for the hundredth time or so, and I wonder. Maybe I am doing that too. Maybe I am not being left behind so much as I am standing right at the center of my own safety net of people everywhere, a tiny dot on a route map of places where a light is left burning for me in the heart of a friend.