Arrivederci

Lin Kiat and I have been married for a little over a month now. The time drawing up to the wedding was such a crazy swirl of events and errands to run. Then the wedding was a burst of color and voices and laughter. After that, we left for Ann Arbor and spent four and a half weeks worrying about nothing except whether we had milk in the fridge and how soon the phone line would be up.

I saw Lin Kiat off at the Detroit airport this afternoon. It was farewell for now, till late December when we will meet again for Christmas (and to see Return of the King). I knew this day would arrive, but never expected it to come so soon. We'd written each other letters - I wrote mine when he was out running an errand, he wrote his when I was in the bedroom studying for my Italian exam (and playing Tomb Raider on my Gameboy Advance). His letter comforted me when I returned to the apartment, a silent and terrible space that reminded me of the weeks we enjoyed together, weeks that I won't experience until perhaps next spring when Lin Kiat will visit again.

'Arrivederci' means 'we will meet again' in Italian, it's a phrase people use when they part. It doesn't hold the wistful meaning of goodbye but a hopeful note of crossing paths in the future. I suppose I shouldn't mope these next few weeks, and I suppose that I will be busy with school soon - writing, reading and grading papers - and that will be enough to keep me from dwelling on sad thoughts. But for now, the apartment is half empty, I'm still sleeping on one side of the bed and I've taken to talking to my Serta sheep toy, a little guy that Lin Kiat and I adopted.

Posted by Monoceros at August 30, 2003 12:41 AM