Fond farewells

Well, since a dearheart of a reader just sent me a Starbucks gift card, in anticipation of Father's Day, and since pretty much everything I write is powered by coffee from that joint, this blog is back in business.

And, since it happens to be May 20, the day of Clara Schumann's death in 1896, let's think for a minute about goodbyes. Cleo will soon be leaving for a summer in South Africa, and yesterday was her last day at the house of her buddy Quentin - who, in turn, is moving to Dallas. So we spent a few moments trying to explain - not easy, to someone with no command of the future tense - that she likely won't see the apartment in which those two have spent many days again. A few goodbyes were said: bye-bye, windows. And then we were off, to less ceremonial activities of the sort that are actually much more meaningful to your average toddler: pushing strollers, flirting with rope swings, and so on.

But those of us who have said goodbye before, many times, found ourselves, nevertheless, in a slightly nostalgic mood. And why not? Moments of farewell remind us of the fortuitous, chancy luck that brought us together in the first place. We'd never met Quentin and Stephanie before, when we first got together to discuss the possibility of sharing a nanny. And now it's hard to imagine the last year without them.

The last music that Clara Schumann heard, before expiring, was her husband's.