Getting Closer To St Louis

So, of course, part of me is excited about living in Pennsylvania, near my folks and other family, a lot of old friends both from high school, college, general life, and Ashokan, and near the big, wicked city that I do love (in moderate doses). But another part of me is sad to have left Crescent City friends and California family. While talking with a Crescent City friend today, I realized that I'm dealing with this by not thinking as much as I should about house-hunting in Pennsylvania and other details that indicate the permanency of this sojourn across the country. Right now, I can close my mind and think of this as a really great vacation. After all, we stopped at a Lewis and Clarke interpretation site this morning and we're staying in a cool old hotel on the Missouri River tonight.

And tomorrow, we'll arrive in St Louis where we can show Darcy our old house and school and favorite places. That is the most vacation-y part of the trip, and we will stop driving east for 48 hours of old friends in our old city. With any luck, the time with old friends will remind me that leaving  a place with great people doesn't mean that the great people leave your life. It just means that they're a little further away.

There's an anthropological term for people who aren't biologically related to you, but play the role of family in your life: fictive kin. I have gathered fictive kin wherever I've gone in my life and it makes for a richer, more meaningful existence. And just as my uncle isn't any less my uncle if he's on the other side of the country, neither do the ties of fictive kinship lessen with distance. 

It's a good thing to keep in mind during transitions.