Lucy and me.

In the closing scene of the movie, Prince Caspian (from the Chronicles of Narnia series), Lucy (the youngest of the enlightened children) has to walk through a giant, split-in-half tree to get back to "normal" life. The magical tree delivers people to a different world, and in her case, back to her childhood. This is Lucy's reward after helping to save a million people and animal-people in a few hours of justified violence in Narnia. In this particular scene, the young Lucy walks through the tree with a confident air: she smiles, she juts out her chin a bit, she struts. But. When she turns around to look back at what she loved and left behind, her smile turns to the shade of disappointment and regret. She turns around with an expectant face only to see only the reality of a crude bus station in England. And the horror of what she has lost seems to punch her in the throat.

This is the best way I can describe my recent experience of moving. I'm here. Through the tree. I'm finally settling in and hanging pictures and getting to know the grocery liquor store clerks. And I take a deep breath and turn around to assure everyone that I'm fine. We're fine. We're all here together, right? And I turn around and... Oh shit. No, we're not. It's just me and my husband and these two little humans (one of whom has been a citizen now of THREE different countries, at the age of SIX) and the rest of you are gone. Out of sight.

And set to the music of Narnia, it is quite a tear-jerker. A first-world whiny problem, no doubt. But. Sometimes, a first-world problem (even with the layer of guilt on top) still punches you. And hurts.