Adventure!
Oh wow... folks, we're GETTING THERE.

The finally check-boxes are being checked. We've arranged to sell the
Big RV ("Exulans") on Saturday. We've rented a car for the final week.
A week from now we'll be in Toronto, and the next day... Setubal!

The process has been... enlightening. It's kind of like dying? I'm
visiting all these Minnesota-based people and places for the last time.
I have people I wanted to see but won't be able to. I have noticed that
not many people really care to see me. 

Emigrating, like dying, tells you who cares about you. My kids care, but
not a lot. That's okay, they're adults, they don't need me to be present.
Still, getting them together is like herding cats. It's hard not to spend
every moment with them apologizing for leaving and hugging them and telling
them I love them and they're precious to me... but that would make it even
HARDER to get them all together next time around. 

My friends... well, they're happy to have a visit with me, but they mostly
don't care.  They make kind noises but they are busy in their lives, and
as with dying, once I'm gone they will go on with their lives as usual,
not feeling diminished. 

And all this is okay. It's how life works. These comments are observational,
not critical or judgmental. Life goes on without you. It's just that when
you die you don't get to see that, but when you are emigrating, you do. 

But then other friends DO care, and they care out of the blue. My friend
Tim has been insistent about getting together. My friend Aliyah as well.
I've known Tim over 50 years, and Aliyah for about 10. And it's nice that
they care, I deeply appreciate it.

So we're getting there - in a few days we'll move into a hotel, a couple
days after that we'll return the rental car and board a plane for Toronto
where we'll rendezvous with Joy's sister Freyja and her wife Gaia. Then
we'll board a plane for Lisbon! A week from now I'll be getting ready to
land in Toronto...

It's bittersweet and slightly anxious. I suspect it will be hard in
unexpected ways. But it's ADVENTURE, which I crave, and starting over again
in a new world. 

And it's weird to think that I'm of an age that I could go there and
then... die! Actually die. I mean, you can die any time, right?, but my
birthparents both died when they were only a year or two older than I am
right now. So I could go to Portugal, and simply never return, and nobody
would find that too unusual. Or I could live to be 102 like my paternal
birth great-grandfather, and come back to Minneapolis in two years or twenty
just to see what has changed.

You don't know how much time you have left, which is all the more reason
to set off on those adventures while you can...