Sunglasses Always Fit

A note – the soundtrack to this is – “Always on my Mind” by Willie Nelson, “Anytime” by Brian McKnight, and “All I Can Think About is You” by Coldplay.

Maybe you’ve seen that post that circulates every once in a while as a self-esteem booster that says you might think poorly about yourself, but you never know how many people in your life have had a crush on you and never told you – and might be thinking of you at that moment. (To which I say – PLEASE TELL ME. You can tell me NOW. Tell me you were in love with me when we were eight, when we were eighteen, I don’t care how long ago it was, I could use it. The current world dating scene is a dumpster fire and I need to know I am lovable.) 

You can never know who in your family is thinking of you, praying for you or remembering you at that moment. You never know which of your coworkers just thought of something they have to tell you tomorrow, or those of your friends that just saw a meme or heard a song or tasted a food or put on a sweater that you gifted to them or set their drink down on a coaster that you brought them from your last trip overseas. Or even an ex who suddenly walked into that one place you guys always went to together and was covered in goosebumps at the memory of you and thought “I was such an idiot to let her slip away.” 

It’s actually a pretty wonderful thought to contemplate. I am one of those people who has a conversation inside her head at all times and can hardly go to sleep at night because of the millions of different hypothetical scenarios I’m enacting with other people or even my future self. I am often thinking of different people throughout my life; sometimes people I haven’t seen in years, sometimes it’s friends parents, because I see them pop up on an Instagram post and just think to myself “wow, she was so nice to us when we came over; I remember that one time I drank too much milk after softball practice and threw up in their sink. She pressed a cool towel to my head.” 

There’s so many foods I eat that make me think of a certain person that introduced me to them. Kombucha reminds me of seeing it for the first time in Leslie’s house because her parents were from China and made it like the OGs they are. Slurpees remind me of Jamie. Los Panchos makes me think of everyone from Leadership in high school – how we’d sneak off to get BCRs and gossip and maybe make a balloon arch. 

Every time I use my tea towel from the trip to London with my mom for my 35th birthday, I remember how much fun it was to meet her at the hotel early in the morning and to be in a foreign country together for the first time just the two of us, and to get to live my life long dream of following the ghost of Jane Austen around everywhere and have my mom take my picture. 

Whenever I get anything altered, I can so easily picture my Grandma, who passed away about 10 years ago now, with sewing pins in her mouth, bending over in a chair to mark where she’d hem something for me. I can hear her peering over her reading glasses to pin her eyes at me and start something with “now Rachel….” She made a lot of clothes for me growing up, matching flower girl dresses for my sisters, gowns for Senior Ball, my costumes for when I was in Grease as Rizzo my Senior Year of high school. Which was such a dream it’s probably when I peaked in life. 

When I buy someone a card, I think of my Grandma Jackie, who has shoeboxes full of them in her house, just waiting for the right moment to hand them out. Using post-it notes for silly things reminds me of Cindy, and how I used to decorate her desk with them and share secrets and big news with stacks of them. Confetti and sashes remind me of Ryann. When I use packing cubes, I think of Rachel, who used to work for Tumi and first told me about them in Argentina 2016. Cookie dough and Cheetos remind me of sleepovers in junior high with Alicia. Meal prep Sundays makes me text Suz. 

I think of Leana when I see animal print, of Ross when I drink whiskey, of Keith whenever I call someone by a wrong name, of Ricky and Jodie whenever I’m explaining rules to a game. The light green of a Heineken means Dad. Omelets with hot sauce mean Dana and Natasha. Hikes where I don’t bring enough supplies or get lost mean Seghs. Hand dryers mean Tracey going delirious at a roadside bathroom on a drive back from Mexico. Cher songs means Georgie. Seeing caterpillar eggs on a leaf reminds me of Maggie.

There are a hundred songs that come on and remind me of a specific person, movies that take me back to a specific place, inside jokes so deeply embedded into my DNA I can’t even remember how they were started, but a single word will drift my mind back to a single person. You can say “one tsp” or “we’re going to Maui?!” or “o-nion” to anyone in my family and we will immediately cackle.

I’ve been thinking of this a lot the last few weeks – the little glimmers of connection we experience through links to other people – as I start to pack up my life here in Hong Kong. I’ve started purging, donating, selling off items to friends and facebook, and it makes me preemptively happy to know that so and so might think of me every time they sleep in my barely used but well loved tent, or swing the dumbbell I’ve mostly employed as a doorstop for the last four years, or that so and so might send up a good word to the man upstairs when they brew coffee in my pink DeLonghi. That a bestie will curl up in this same chair I’m sitting in now, with her own glass of wine, her own cozy socks on, some cold day in the future, and smile fondly at a memory of me! What a gift.

As a child of divorce, an international teacher, and someone who’s always been pretty nomadic by nature, you’d think it wouldn’t be that big a deal to move on. But I’ve lived in Hong Kong for seven years. I’ll be leaving three weeks short of becoming a citizen of Hong Kong/China. (weeeeeird) It’s my longest stay-in-one-place stint since I was 13.

I’m unraveling a life here and it would be easy to be breezy and callous about it, but I want to do it well. I want to leave well-remembered. I want to leave glimmers for the friends that have become family during my time here. Which is tough to do when your heart is also breaking at the same time. But.

We can do hard things. God gives his toughest battles to his strongest warriors and I truly believe he’s overestimating me in this one but. Onward.

So yeah, if you haven’t heard yet, I’m leaving hong kong after seven years. I guess this is my soft launch of my next adventure . . . stay tuned to find out where I’ll hang my backpack next.

until next time.