Moving on…

Tony Bennett got it right when he sang, I left my heart in San Francisco.  This city, with its sweeping views, outlandish political and social antics and inspiring friends-who-are-more-like-family has become home to this East-Coaster.  Walking away feels more like tearing the fabric of my soul in half.

I remember my very first whiff of what would become my life here.  Between semesters of my junior year in college, I drove from Washington, DC to San Francisco.  I turned 21 years old mid-trip while in St. Louis, Missouri and crossed into California a few days later.  Cresting Highway 580 somewhere near Livermore, I saw the hulking, Cyclops-like, bright-white wind turbines covering green-like-I’d-never-seen-green rolling hills, and I burst into tears.

I pulled over and leaned across my steering wheel and let the sobs come.  I could sense the change that was coming.  I was entering adulthood, about to experience the grown-up me and life was pregnant with opportunity.  My boyfriend (soon-to-be-husband), new friends, new food, new landscape, new classes and new jobs lay just on the other side of those hills.  What I couldn’t have know in that emotive moment, was that from my very first glimpse of this city my heart would break into a million little pieces of love for it and its inhabitants.

Brad and I married the following summer (yes, I married him before I even graduated from college – gasp!), and other than very short stints in Washington DC, New York and London, we’ve managed to plant ourselves here in the city where love is everywhere.

Company transfers, better job opportunities and the recent financial crisis have all provided us chances to leave.  Heck, just paying private school tuition for so many years has led to many conversations about the golden, sun-drenched county just north of us.  But our hearts were inexplicably tethered to this place and what we wanted for our kids was to know and love this city like we did.  And they do.  This is home for all of us.  Though we have no close relatives anywhere near us, we have managed to fill our dining room on Thanksgiving, year after year, with thirty or so people we call family.  And that’s what makes this next chapter so heart-wrenching.

In case you haven’t heard, I’m moving to Singapore this summer.  My husband is already there working and building the beginning of our new lives.  The time difference makes it somewhat difficult to connect, but as he is waking up and I am picking up the kids from school, we video chat.  It’s hectic and chaotic on our end, but we’re happy to see his face and hear bits about his day.  He always mentions the heat in Singapore, and I talk about the fog in San Francisco.  We’re moving from a city that is too cold to one that will feel too hot for us.  We’ll deal with it, like we’ll deal with the new food (last night I asked him if he’d spotted any sort of taqueria – even something like a Chevy’s.  No.  Ugh.  Knife to the heart.), new friends (I’ve already have phone dates with friends of friends and a few people from Singapore will be in the states this summer and I’m going on blind dates with them) and a new environment full of tall buildings, crowded sidewalks and a blending of languages and cultures.  We’ll deal, and slowly our hearts will open up to that gateway into Asia.  We’ll meet interesting people, travel to places I never thought I’d see, expose ourselves and kids to cultures, needs, lives, sights, smells and sounds and we will fall in love with what’s next for us.

But be clear:  pieces of our hearts will be planted here forever.  In Shelly and Craig’s backyard, on the fourth row and in the balcony of City Church, around the Pause circle, on the walk from downtown to the Marina, in the living rooms of women all over, at Gordos and Panchos, at the Bruce Mahoney, at AT&T Park, in a classroom at Herbst House, one across the street teaching Latin and another in the basement where math is made exciting, wherever flan is homemade or Diet Coke from a fountain is on offer, on the stoops of 7^th Avenue, in the arms of hug-giving teenage girls, in pods-for-life and cabinet, in the heart of one Salvadorena wherever she goes, where the meatballs, roasted chickens and lemon bars are made, where the hearts beat huff, where children remember that nothin’, nothin’, absolutely nothing can separate,  in a hot tub in Mill Valley and another in Sea Cliff, and especially, especially at one house on Broadway.  A million little pieces is the only way to describe the heartbreak we feel right now.  Like maybe, this thing here (however to describe it?  Life?  Love?  Investment?  Work?  Time?), it’s just not finished.  Some relationships feel as if we’ve only just begun!  We’re spread too far and too deep here in this city to know how to begin to pull out.

Like with a band-aid, we just need to rip it and know we will sting and maybe even bleed, but time is on our side, as it always is.  What seems hard today will feel possible tomorrow.

So …we’re leaving.  Many of you have asked questions I will try to answer here.  I will keep the heartache and emotion out of the answers as best I can and just try to stick to the facts, ma’am.

When?  Brad is there already.  Kids and I fly August 1^st.

Why?  The short answer is that Brad took a new (great!) job and the kids and I are so thrilled for him that we jumped up and down congratulating him and beaming with pride.  The longer answer involves his leaving a job not worthy – or welcoming – of his character and moral compass.  To say that he had been managing a stress level in code red would be an understatement.  So, yes, a new job in Singapore is a wild, big change, but one we are all embracing for him.

Why now?  Our kids are breaths away from being launched, so why inject all this change and transition into their lives, right?  Well, I guess because opportunity knocked in such a way that suggests there is work for us to do there.  As much as I wanted to give my kids a full childhood here in beautiful San Francisco (I’ve clung to this dream so hard, fingers clenched, knuckles white, holding on for dear life), I am choosing to believe that offering them this chance to see a different part of the world, to know a different life and to see their parents in action with new people, places and things is just what The Good Doctor is ordering.  So, we’ll board that flight full of hope and expectancy, searching for the stones signaling our path.

School?  Kids will be going to Singapore American School with loads of expats from around the world and some local kids.  Close friends of close friends run a Christian youth group organization there and have invited my kids to join a group at a camp in June.  Yes, literally thirty kids from the new school in Singapore are coming to Oregon for summer camp and we happen to know the adults chaperoning them and they extended an invitation to my kids.  Fer realz.  I can’t make this stuff up.  One of the stones laid for our path …

Housing?  We are not at all sure.  Brad is hotel living for now, and we’ll move into temporary housing when we arrive, then the housing search will begin.  Choices include high-rise modern, possibly smaller, apartments, a multiple-level “cluster house” (growing up on the East Coast we called these townhouses, but here in San Francisco this is just the way most houses look!) where we’d share walls with neighbors and common grounds, or a “landed house” which is free-standing, has a yard, etc.  I could be wrong about all of this.  I’m getting it from the interwebs.  I’ll figure it out when I get there.

How long will I be gone?  Lots of families moving to Singapore have a definitive amount of time they’ll be “stationed” overseas.  We don’t.  His new job is there.  Like, right there.  His region is vast and includes all of Asia, including India, and Australia.  He doesn’t have a contract to return to the States, but if there is one thing any of us can depend on, it’s that everything always changes.  We’ve agreed he’ll be in this role for 3- 5 years and I am hoping for five because that would get both kids through high school and launched (likely) back in the States.  (My heart just oozed a little with that reality.  In five years, both of my kids will be gone)

Language barrier?  Singaporeans speak English, often referred to as “Singlish” because of its unique lilt and vocabulary.  Most of them also speak Mandarin, Malay, or various Indian dialects.  We’ll stick to English and probably come back with a little Singlish as well.

Our Stuff?  This is by far the most frequently asked question.  After some massive purging efforts, we will bring everything we own.  The way we figure it, if we store it for five years and that becomes ten years, we probably won’t want it and don’t need it.  And seriously, why own something I can’t use?  So the furniture, the bedding, the china, the silver and the crystal are going to float at sea and make their way to us in a container.

Me?  How do I feel?  I’ve already covered that I am heartbroken, right?  Like torn in two, hung from the rafters, gnashing of teeth, devastated to leave my people.  Two hours after telling my 15-year-old that her life will radically change, she turned to me with sudden beyond-her-years insight and said. “Mom, Papi will have a new job, Louis and I will have a new school and friends, but I am worried about you.  You will have to give up Pause and CAbi and you will have nothing.”  Uh-huh, way to name it, sister.

Pause is my third child.  Literally my actual heartbeat can be traced to Wednesday mornings and the brave group of women who show up on my doorstep and work through all their questions, confusion, hurts and hopes.  Sometimes we sit in a circle and pray out loud to a God some aren’t even sure exists … it’s a slice of heaven right here in the Marina District.  The last Pause gathering was beYOND emotional.  Shelly called all the ladies who have gathered in my living room for the last eight years – some for a short time, some while they job-searched, some only when they could and some every single Wednesday – and together we had a two-hour sobfest.  I am still recovering because, Oh! the words that were spoken.  It was the closest I will ever come to witnessing my own eulogy and hearing, feeling and knowing what I mean to people.  It was wrenching and inspiring and none of us had any mascara left and our faces were swollen and red and I’ve never seen a room of women so stunningly beautiful, whole and connected in all my life.  I’ll miss them desperately and I will think of them each Wednesday, all off on their own paths, continuing the work we used to do together.

CAbi is encouraging me to keep my business thriving.  (If you are a client or hostess, you’ll get a note from me soon with all sorts of details.)  Because I won’t be able to sell CAbi in Singapore (yet), I’ll be making regular trips back to the US to hold shows in jam-packed days and nights.  (I get a thrill just thinking about those return trips!)  I met a client at a show last weekend and I explained my plan and she raised an eyebrow in confusion, Whaaattt?  You’re going to fly for 20 hours around the world to sell clothes to women who could just order them online?  Later in the evening, after hours of laughter and connection unique to CAbi shows, she sidled up to me and whispered, “Now I get it.  If I had this job, I’d fly back from Singapore to do it too.“  I’m doing it for myself and for all the women I get to love on at each show.

Finally, you know how I say I like to write, but it seems like what I really do is think about writing all the time while actually doing a whole bunch of other things.  After the initial hubbub of moving and settling in, and in between my CAbi trips, I really won’t have much to do.  Like a peeled onion, the obligations I carry now will be stripped away and I will be left with a big choice:  To write or not.  And I hope I choose to honor this passion and write the essays, book or manifesto that’s waiting to come from me.  It will take some courage to face down the fear, so Plan A is to be brave and show up for the stories that want to be written.

I’ve heard the kindest, most generous fare-thee-wells since we announced our imminent departure.  I hold each one in my heart and keep replaying them like a soundtrack stuck on repeat.  At one of the many goodbye gatherings we’ve been privileged to enjoy, my dear friend, Dan, gave a toast and offered up a challenge.  “You are leaving a crater sized hole in San Francisco.  Go make a crater in Singapore.”  We’re going to try, Dan, we can promise you that.

Dear God, please hold all of these loved ones here in San Francisco in your tender embrace.  And show us who needs love in Singapore.

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Golden Gate Bridge photo credit

Wind Turbine photo credit

Singapore photo credit