BREAKING

Art Of Our CultureIn The Magazine

Parting is such sweet sorrow

From Behind the Lens

Parting is such sweet sorrow

By: Colleen Swartz

October, 2007

I was raised in a conservative Midwestern family. My parents were more than touched by the great depression and my father served in WWII and Korea. They came from nothing and we had not much more when I was growing up. But we had manners.

Going to a family event in my childhood home required dressing up, preparing more food than could possibly be consumed, showing up early, and leaving only after each and every family member had been kissed goodbye. To miss just one of them would be risking the disdain of not only that particular relative, but this egregious event would be discussed amongst them and you risked being labeled “rude”.

I never thought much about this tradition; I only knew that I sucked at it. I showed up dressed as I pleased, I would get there when I got there and I would leave when I had enough and the last person I was talking to when I decided to leave would be the only one that I would make a point to say good bye to. I might as well have shown up wearing black fleece.

I wasn’t raised like a lot of my readers with an old man who always rode and grey-beards imparting life lessons…. I came from a foreign place to where I live now and I love the fact that I can look and appreciate where I am and how much it fits me by seeing the differences and nuances of the people I now know as “home”.

Saying goodbye is the perfect (if not subtle) example of this. I first learned this from my good friend Bean’re who put this distinctive difference into words for me. We were at an event, Bean’re was there chatting with me, I went to do something and when I turned back around Bean’re was gone. The next day when I saw him I mentioned to him that he seemed to just disappear on me the night before and he shrugged his shoulders and said, “That is what we do… we come when it is time for us to come and we leave when it is time for us to leave and everyone pretty much knows it.”

I can’t tell you how liberating it was for me to realize this unwritten code and what it meant for me. Maybe it was borne from fast changing weather and the need to hop on and pull out before the rain hit, or maybe it was to leave a gathering when someone you had a beef with showed up, or maybe it came just from the fact that you don’t owe everyone in the damn group an engraved ass-kissing upon departure. What ever it is, I like it.

Now when I am at a bike event I don’t have to make it a point to go around and greet each and every person there. If I have something to say, I say it. If I want to talk to someone, I talk. If they want to talk to me, they find me. When it is time to leave, I consult with the person I rode in with and beyond that I can feel free to leave.

In my family when I go to a wedding or funeral or reunion, I have to begin to prepare to leave at least an hour in advance of my actual departure. I have to look at my significant other or my Mom and say, “I need to be out of here by 8:00 so I better start saying goodbye at 7:00 so that I can be assured that I will be able to leave on time.” It is a terrible burden to have to circle the room and check off my mental list of relatives who will invariably note that I didn’t say goodbye to them before leaving. It takes forever and pulls you into all sorts of other conversations where they try to make you feel good about yourself by asking what is new in your life and you try to make them feel good by seeking them out to say goodbye when you know the only time you will see this person is at the next wedding or funeral or reunion. I do not choose to hang out with these people outside of the wedding or funeral or reunion, so I have a really hard time updating them on what I consider an awesome job and life when they look blankly at me wondering when I am going to grow up.

Don’t get me wrong. These are good people. They are my people. I just have a hard time relating to them as they do to me.

Around 1565 Shakespeare wrote “Parting is such sweet sorrow” and now I have found that bikers have perfected the solution to it. Just don’t say goodbye.

And that is how I see it, from behind the lens.

Colleen’s work can be viewed at www.digitalmagicbigshots.com or at www.myspace.com/colleenswartz. Your comments are always welcome at colleen@digitalmagicbigshots.com.

Related Posts

1 of 66