Day 300: Happy Trails

Tonight I’m having dinner with my colleague and friend before she moves away permanently.

We were hired at WVU the same year, and started on the same day. We’d both been in Morgantown for a few weeks before we met for the first time at a lunch hosted by another colleague.

Teasing, she said, “I heard you were already here and I hadn’t met you yet … I thought you didn’t like me.”

Photo by Kevin West on Unsplash

I said, “How could I not like you when I hadn’t met you?”

“Oh,” she said, laughing, “my insecurity knows no rational bounds.”

She’s awesome, I thought. We’re gonna be friends.

Since then, we’ve shared teaching tips, recipes, and rooms on study abroad trips. We’ve shared meals, prayers, and relationship advice.

Now we share an experience of a community in trouble. Neither of us foresaw this, but our paths are now diverging.

She got a great new opportunity, and I wish her the greatest success, as I do all of my colleagues who will depart at the end of this academic year.

It’s hard to make sense of all this change and loss. So mostly, I don’t try.

Happy trails to all my friends - until we meet again!