No such thing as good-bye

I have prided myself on the perceived strength of not giving into pressure, but I find myself buckling under the constant request of dear friends to open a family blog which may or may not detail the adventures of our family. As I’m sure all of you know, we are in the midst of a move to Europe, to the UK to be specific. I fell into a job with Amnesty International and now we are on our way. The past several months have been full of tension and uncertainty, and strangely enough, peace. As I sit here at Denver International with a one-way ticket in my hand, I am pondering a decade of experience in the first place our family collectively has been able to call home. Leaving Lafayette, Colorado is a leaving home, and I’m not quite sure I’m handling it well.

It’s June 8, and I won’t see my kids or wife until July 15, which is hard enough. I’ve traveled enough in the past to know how to navigate days and weeks apart, but today is different. My kids sense it. I feel it deeply. It is no small thing that the ticket I hold is one-way. We are uprooting and moving and we are all experiencing the loss. Dear friends have told us repeatedly about the adventure that awaits us. Living abroad with children certainly can be an amazing experience, but all things being equal, I wanted to stay. I have reveled in the fact that my kids have gone to the same schools and grown up with the same friends their entire lives. Now that all is changing.

I should shut up with the whining, though. Change is hard, to be sure, but an amazing opportunity does await us. London is one of the world’s great cities and we will be within shouting distance of Paris, Rome, Berlin, Madrid and all the living history one could want. We are a soccer family, and Europe is where soccer (football) calls home. And somewhere in Germany is the giant sandbox, a memory from my youth that soon I will impart to my kids. You’ll have to wait to hear that story.

So we’re off. In a few weeks our goods will be packed and put on a boat headed northeast. Melia and the boys will land in London in July and we’ll head to a place yet unknown that if all goes well, we’ll begin to call home. We’ll figure out school for the boys, church for our family, and of course the local soccer club. Hopefully we’ll find people who we will begin to call friends. What we want is to find community, a place where we can be ourselves.

Today has been hard because it has been full of good-byes for me. There is a surreal finality in the air. I think I’m ready, though. I am tired of the Atlantic commute every 3 or 4 weeks. We are all ready to be in on place. But good-bye’s are difficult. That’s ok. If life is good, they should always be difficult.

So instead, I say, “see you later.” We’ll be back in Colorado sooner or later. We love it too much to stay away. We also own two properties there so we have to come back and deal with those details. We have no idea if this move is permanent or temporary, or what those two words even mean. But we do know that amongst real community, there is no such thing as goodbye. Also, we fully expect everyone of you who said you’d come and visit England to actually do so.

The hugs and hand-shakes meant more over the past week than usual. To all of you, thank you for that. Thank you for loving our eclectic family, for walking with us through every valley and peak, for being our community where we have felt freedom to be ourselves. Thank you for blessing us in this seemingly crazy move. Thank you for helping us raise our children and for sharing your children with us. Thank you for being our friends.

We promise to keep this blog posted with the latest happenings of the Syed family. We might even post some photos at times. Please, keep in touch with us as well. We are not the only ones living an adventure.

Viva la vida,

Andrew Syed – from DIA airport on a cloudy day in Colorado….


P.S. Get a passport and download skype. It is a small planet....