Family, Waiting, and Band Aids

I am leaving California for Oregon next Friday, so I am trying to see as much of my family and friends as I can in my last week and a half here. I went back to my hometown to visit my sister, niece and father today, which entailed Americanized Chinese food, playing skee ball at Chuck E Cheese's, and swimming in a blow up pool in my sister's back yard. As I said good bye to my father tonight- whom I will see in a week, granted- I realized how much I am going to miss him when I go to Turkmenistan.

We have had a turbulent relationship during most of my life, but over the past two years it has turned into what I would imagine constitutes a healthy father-daughter relationship. I ask him for advice, he gives me restrictions, I break said restrictions, and he adjusts his expectations in order to deal with me. Last summer, he explicitly told me "You can leave the state [for work, school, etc.] you just are not allowed to go to the east coast or leave the country." I was applying for the Peace Corps at the time. With time, he has grown to be surprisingly compliant concerning the plans I have for my life, which are so terribly different than the plans he had for me.

This lead me to consider how this experience would have been different had I accepted my other invitation option to leave in June. I would have been so busy, consumed in rapid preparations after finals and graduation, that I wouldn't have had time to reflect on anything, or think about my family at all. I would have had to be focused on my departure, and probably would not have even thought about my family or friends until I arrived in country and finally had some down time. Not leaving until September has allowed me to take time to visit everyone I love, but it has also given me time to fester over the changes that will ensue, like slowly peeling off a sticky Band Aid. I know that I already made my decision, and there is no going back now- and I don't want to, really- but which would have been better? Ripping the Band Aid off quickly by leaving in June, or this anticipation allowed by the slow peeling that is leaving in September?

This is my dad. If he ever learns how to use the internet and finds this blog, he probably won't love that I put this picture  of him on here, but he is such an adorable man, I couldn't resist.