Leaving for the Peace Corps
I’m 66 years old and joining the Peace Corps. This has been a dream of mine since I was in elementary school. I am on an airplane bound for Washington, DC with my partner, Ramona. There we will meet the other 36 volunteers in the MAK-26 cohort bound for North Macedonia for a two-year commitment. I’ll be working in Community Economic Development and Ramona will be teaching English as a Foreign Language. It’s going to be quite an adventure. We have only vague ideas of what to expect. I try to focus on living in the moment and keep the expectations to a minimum. In my experience, they’re mostly a prelude to disappointment preventing the enjoyment of what dreams may come.
This demarcation in my life is stark. It’s like Cortez who burned his ships to encourage his crew to settle down and build a new life in a new world. There’s no going back. Life is a series of choices that you can’t unchoose. Some can be mitigated more than others, but pulling up stakes and moving halfway around the world? You better be confident about your choice by the time they turn on the “Fasten Your Seatbelts” sign. I’ve been preparing for this moment for years. Once I decided to retire, I talked about the Peace Corps. I researched and planned and then began the administrative tasks of applying and getting the required clearances. Sometimes all the hoops through which I was required to jump seemed Sisyphean. But they were all imposed on me by the Peace Corps. Much harder was taking stock of my life; deciding what to keep and to discard, what projects to complete and what to leave undone.
It’s been an incredible process wrapping up my life to start an entirely new one. Packing up my life into two suitcases and a carry-on was an amazing process itself, but it doesn’t compare to the difficulty of saying goodbye to everyone I know. This isn’t a ‘see ya later’ parting moment. This is bon voyage for an extended time. Some people have asked me what’s next after the Peace Corps. Actually, I have no idea. I’m writing this script as I go. I view this as an end and a beginning. I may never come back. The world awaits and there is so much to see and experience. As Mame Dennis said, “Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death. Get out there and live.”
I’ve owned a duplex for 25 years. My daughter, Jessica, and my granddaughter, Brianna live upstairs and an old friend of mine, Paul, moved into my apartment today. He’ll be renting from me until I come back. That’s the plan anyway. We’ll figure out how to move forward when I get back, if I come back. Anyway, I’ve had these temporary front steps in front of my house for over five years. The plan was to build flagstone steps to match the patio. It took two weeks and Herculean efforts from Paul and Kit, but we got them in, and they are pretty. I have newfound respect for stone masons. Too bad I was only able to enjoy them for a couple of weeks.
I’ve been meaning to strip the wallpaper in my bedroom. It’s old, and I don’t like it. My late wife picked it out and she doesn’t care anymore. There were parts of the paper that were literally falling away from the wall. It’s been up for so long and I didn’t really know what I was doing when I hung it, so that’s the natural result. It was easy to ignore. I don’t spend that much time in my bedroom with my eyes open. But now that someone else will be sleeping in there, I can’t just leave it all shabby like that. I didn’t have time to strip it properly and repaint, so I compromised with myself. I just touched up the seams that needed it. That’ll last for a while. I still don’t like the wallpaper, but I also don’t have to look at it.
There were several projects that I completed and many that got left undone. I’m glad that I finished the projects that I chose to do and did not even attempt the ones that I decided to leave. Two things that I’ve learned about DIY projects, they’re never as easy as they appear, and they take three times longer than you plan.
There was so much anxiety in getting ready to leave. It was difficult to disappoint people by telling them that I just don’t have time to say goodbye in person and that a phone call or text message will have to do. Those kinds of decisions were often made for me as the time slipped away. And then there was the shame of wishing I’d been busier and more disciplined earlier in the year. I spent so much time screwing around. But it is what it is. Someone told me once that time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. But I’m nothing if not efficient, so we had a going away party.
When all is said and done, I will have said all that needed to be said and done all that needed to have been done. There’s no getting around that. Everything else was delegated. I’m in North Macedonia now and the messes that I left will need to be taken care of by my friends and family. I trust that they won’t resent me too much.
All my priorities have changed overnight and now they change on a weekly basis. Now it’s back to my language studies.
