Nearing the End

Now that I'm in my final months of service in St. Vincent, I've been thinking a lot about what I will miss and what I will not miss. I'd be lying if I said my 'Not Miss' list was short. It isn't. It's very long and runs deeply perpendicular to my strongest ideals and beliefs. But I'd hate to spend my last months focused on the negative, so I'm going to talk instead about the things I will miss. There are, of course, the obvious ones - my friends, my students (even if they drive me absolutely crazy...which they do most of the time) - but I think it's the subtler things that really make St. Vincent for me. I will miss the green. I will miss the way the mist slips over the mountains after the rain, enclosing the valley in a blanket of clouds. I will miss running toward the ocean, tasting the salty blasts of wind before I feel them. I will miss sitting on my porch, watching the hummingbirds flee from the safety of one banana tree to the next. I will miss the solitude, the pervasive calm of the island. So much of my happiness here is entwined not in my job or my accomplishments, but in the island itself: in the ocean, the mountains, the stars, and I worry that when I leave I will lose some part of my happy among the throes of daily life in a big city*. I know that my post St. Vincent adventures will bring new joys, and a big part of me is excited to discover them, but another part wonders how I'll feel to share an apartment building with 500 other people, to exchange mountains for skyscrapers, to lose sight of all but the biggest stars. My life in St. Vincent has been frustrating and stressful and exhausting, but I'm really happy here, and I hope I don't lose that when I rejoin "civilization." I hope that I will be able to carry St. Vincent with me even as I move away from her.

*When you live on an island of 100,000 people, any city is a big city!