A Love Letter

As have been mentioned many times before, I am soon to be a Peace Corps trainee and within three months a Peace Corps Volunteer. I am leaving for the country of Turkmenistan, a country that up until being invited, had never heard of. I can only make assumptions at what life is like in Turkmenistan. I could write on here facts and history about this country but I won’t, because it won’t be accurate. I don’t know this country yet. I have not met it’s people or experienced their culture… but I am now more than ready to. I am tired of guessing at what it will be like. I want to know. The only thing I am certain of is the life that I have led for the past twenty two years with the people who matter to me in the town that I was born in. The only things that I know are the things that I am unavoidably going to be thinking about, missing, every minute for the next two years. Of course there will be wonderful and exciting encounters that will fulfill these absences and I am beyond grateful for the chance to experience those. The Peace Corps has been the only thing that made sense to me to do since high school. It was the only part of my future that I could predict or hope for . The rest will have to present itself in due time.

I will miss the small stone path leading up to my house. The smell of the Gourmet Ghetto and Cheeseboard pizza wafting up in the afternoons and early evenings. The fog that unpredictably curls up to Grizzly Peak making it impossible to drive through. I will miss seeing Charlie’s head popping up above the window sill as I come up the driveway. My mother’s stews and soups and her ability to listen to everything and nothing at once and the good humor and practical optimism that she carries with her everywhere. I will miss watching food and cooking shows with my father and listening to his endless stories about everything and anything because he has that incredible ability to know something about everything. I will miss the countless hours I have spent sitting in my aunt’s living room and uncle’s garden with my whole family making fun of each other with the most brutal and loving honesty possible between such a tight knit group of people. I am not ready for the heart wrenching absence of the one I love most and the moments we spend doing everything and nothing together, playing thumb war, consoling each other, inspiring each other for more. I will miss the murmur of excitement I get every time I come out of the tunnel on the Bay Bridge and look directly into the city. The friends that have shared moments of celebration and disappointments: whispered secrets with Kelly spoken in Cantonese, Myclarinique time, shared bottles of wine with Rob and Jeremy, pool time with Annie, hour long conversations about food with Marisa and Courtney, just to name a few. These are the things that I have come to know as the things I love. Tomorrow, I am leaving on a jet plane… but I will return again. Two years is a short blip and when I come home we will all be a little bit older and (hopefully) wiser and more experienced in the ways of the world. And we will all be more ready than ever to live out our lives... together.

With all my love,
Clarissa