Leaving

For my last meal in San Antonio, I returned to the one special restaurant at which I ate far and away the most times during my stay in the Alamo City - Florio's Pizza. This was the first time I ate the pie without having it sit in its own juices for twenty minutes as I drove it home, so it was even better than usual. It was also during the lunch rush, and while sitting at the counter I was able to listen to the rapport the customers had established with the New Jersey family making the product. It was a reminder as to why I ate there so many times and a suiting final stop before leaving for Kansas.

Part of me hates leaving - I've already established relationships with people, I've gotten comfortable in my lifestyle, and moving sucks. Every time I do have to leave, however, I'm reminded of a scene in the finale of Six Feet Under - perhaps one of the finest endings to a television show ever. Clair is saying goodbye to the family before she moves to New York, I think - it's been a while since I watched the entire thing. Teary-eyed, she gets everyone together to take a picture, and Nate appears behind her, and says "You can't take a picture of this. It's already gone." It's true - by the time we start lamenting about losing what was, everything's already begun to move on to what is. By the time I left, all but three people had already left the city.


And while I loved living in San Antonio, I was beginning to feel that in the year I spent living there I had uncovered most of the secrets the city had to offer. Having moved roughly once a year over the past three years, I realize that there is a benefit to leaving that I crave - it's the chance to get a fresh start, to take who I was and tweak it to make it someone I want to be. It's an iterative process, and while I've made some progress since I graduated college, there's still work to be done. In the meantime, I can look forward to what my new home has to offer and look for the benefits, rather than focus on the uncomfortable change.

There's an old Italian proverb that says that everything has an end, except salami, which has two. I think that has relevance, but I'm not sure.