Thank you, Hawaii.

It's kind of hard to not sit here in my mother's house in Vermont, 30 hours after moving away from Hawaii, and wonder: have we made the right decision?

Is it just because it was Hawaii? If we have left southern New Jersey would I be sitting at my computer on Thursday night, not having slept since Tuesday, wide awake, and trying to remind myself that this was not something we came to lightly?

Though I sit here with my baby OZ, SSZ sleeping in the next room, and my parents and their dogs are one room further away, I am struck with loneliness that I can only understand to be associated with some kind of mourning. Though this move will eventually bring great things - the things that made our decision evident - I am only just beginning to understand what I have left behind.

I did not cry as I hugged many hugs in the past week. Nor did I cry when we put our bags into the plane. I thought about making flight connections and if OZ would scream the whole trip. It was distraction. A necessary distraction. But with all the doors locked up, the lights turned off and no unpacking to keep my mind idle, I am no longer distracted. I am sad.

Sad that my baby will not truly be able to live Hawaii. Sad that I let myself be more distracted than alive much of the time I was there. Sad that I am no longer there.

It is too raw to even put up the final photos of OZ in the ocean. To even look at the computer time that is still set to HST.

I look forward, I do, to this life we will cultivate in my homeland. But that does not mean that I will not look back on Hawaii without fresh tears.

Thank you, Hawaii. In the end, it was exactly what I needed.