A Good Goodbye

Loss of Leverage

If you were driving along the Eastern seaboard this holiday break and saw an old-man-girl-dad enthusiastically lip-syncing “Let It Go” while his three-year-old daughter belted out the lyrics from her car seat, well, that is my life these days.

The Noorani-Gavin crew says goodbye to Cali

I love introducing people to each other. I endure introducing myself. I hate saying goodbye.

In big groups or small, I am happiest sneaking onto the sidelines, listening, asking questions, offering a deflecting quip. The less about me, the better. (Let’s set aside the contradiction of an entire Substack dedicated to telling you about me.)

In any case, I have always been a big believer in the Irish Goodbye. Melt out of a room. No explanation. Comfortable with the idea I will (or will not) spend time with that group again.

My belief in the Irish Goodbye doesn’t come from a disdain for people. As Toya often points out, in spite of my weirdness, I like having people around. I get energy from gatherings.

Toya, along with Baby Girl, of course, is changing all this.

Over the Fall, as our move from the Bay Area to Boston grew closer, we started to think about our goodbyes. Of course, I wanted to slink out of town in the dead of the night. Toya convinced me that a proper goodbye would be important for Anisa.

Toya, in her infinite wisdom, got Gotta Go, Buffalo and The Berenstain Bears’ Moving Day for us to integrate into our bedtime reading routine. We made sure Anisa’s Bay Area pre-school knew we were leaving. Which led to a goodbye circle for Anisa that her parents were explicitly not invited to — Ms. B. knew there was zero chance Mom and Dad would keep it together.

I was helpful in, umm, different ways.

I organized (and reorganized) our freezer, combining random condiments with random frozen goods to prepare random meals. I sold random things I figured we wouldn’t need in Boston. (For another post: This “sell everything even if it takes hours” behavior made me realize I have become my Dad.) I prioritized finishing off the good booze since open bottles do not travel well. Maybe some unopened bottles were opened as well. And, I planned a family and friends going away party at Line 51 (great little spot worthy of your time).

With the exception of the going away party (see sneaking onto sidelines, above), most everything I did had nothing to do with saying goodbye. Still, I have come to appreciate a good goodbye.

Back in 2020, Jo-Anne Finkelstein wrote in Psychology Today that, “Goodbyes give us a sense of closure as we move into the next phases of our lives.” Furthermore, Schwörer, Krott, and Oettingen (2020) found across seven different studies that “well-rounded endings”—those marked by a sense of closure—were associated with positive affect, relatively little regret, and an easier transition into the next life phase.

So, yes, saying goodbye helps us (Anisa, in particular) be ready for the fun that awaits in Boston. For me, saying goodbye helped me realize what the last three years have meant.

Going back to California was an opportunity to be near family again after more than 20 years on the East Coast. Welcoming Anisa to a world where she was surrounded by my Mom, sisters and their families is something we will always cherish. We will see them again; and, hopefully, often. What was more important, and harder, to say goodbye to was the community we built around us in short order.

The G. family hosted all of us for a great goodbye dinner

Whether or not Anisa will remember Julian, her nanny-share buddy next door, remains to be seen. But, Toya and I will always remember the generosity and kindness of his parents, Liz and Jon. Aunty Cammy, Uncle Jimmy and family down the street witnessed Anisa’s first steps and were always a ball of fun. And, both of these families stepped into the breach to take care of Anisa when Toya was hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy while I was on the East Coast.

And, holy s—t, the Moms groups. Remarkable women who provided Toya a friends group in those early days of motherhood. The list is long of people we said hello to three years ago and are terribly sad to say goodbye to now.

Saying goodbye helps me understand how to say hello. What kind of people will we seek out in Boston? Who will Anisa’s friends be? A hello that deflects isn’t going to cut it - even if that is in my nature.

Perhaps a meaningful hello may be as simple as imagining a good goodbye.

The Loss of Leverage

This was the first year Anisa began to really understand that her birthday and Christmas were taking place. Of course, as a good American, she realized that presents were included.

The fact she is a “Christmas baby” (minus two days) immediately leads to discussions about the struggle of organizing birthday parties during the holidays, the avalanche of gifts that need to be procured for consecutive celebrations, the lack of separation between one celebration and the other.

See, I don’t think any of that is going to be a problem. As the youngest grandchild and niece in a pretty big family, there will be an abundance of love for Baby Girl every December. And I have no fear that celebrations will be appropriately and aggressively separated.

Instead, I’m worried about my loss of leverage.

“Good luck, Daddy.”

In the days leading up to this year’s birthday/Christmas, I found myself dangling presents as an incentive for good behavior. (Hate the game, not the player.) Which, unsurprisingly, worked fairly well as Anisa picked up pretty quickly that there were consequences to her actions and that one of those consequences could be a lack of birthday or Christmas presents.

Then, I realized Anisa is smart enough to understand the game. And, soon, she would figure out that she needed to be good, what, five, maybe ten, days a year in order to get birthday and Christmas presents?

The other 355 days of the year? I have zero leverage.

Zero.

At this point, I am not a good enough parent to be operating without any leverage. Toya? She’ll figure out ways to hold Baby Girl accountable.

But, me? Anisa already smells the fear.

Reading

One of my closest friends loves the movie In Bruges. He thinks it is one of the funniest movies ever made. I’ve tried watching it many times and always give up before the halfway point. Point being that he has terrible taste in movies.

In any case, another friend’s wife recently wrote her debut novel, Canticle, a mystical read about Aleys and Finn in 13th century Bruges. Recognized by People as one of the best books of December, it is so much better than that weird movie. So much.

Cooking

Stopped for a few days in Hamilton, NJ, to hang with Toya’s sister and her husband. New Year’s Eve banger of a coconut cashew chicken curry is on the stove…

Watching

My brother-in-law and I decided to watch 28 Years Later the other night. It is a zombie of a movie about zombies. But better than In Bruges.

Resolving

Never been a New Year’s Resolution type of person. But this quote from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead feels right: “My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”

Listening

Enjoying De La Soul’s new album, Cabin in the Sky. So, let’s ring in the New Year with some old school De La….