The Foreign Service lifestyle is filled with farewells, and never is this more obvious than summer months here on our embassy housing compound in Seoul.
Friends pack up and leave, and almost immediately, the curtains come down. The furniture comes out. After a week or so, the family name on the sign out front is painted over—but not enough to completely hide it.
Workers go in and out over the next weeks, cleaning, updating, painting, replacing. Flipping for a new family. I’ve watched this happen to several friends’ houses over the last year and a half, and honestly, it is sad.
When we arrived in January 2012, several people told us they were “not worth getting to know” since they were leaving six months later. Funny enough, several of those people became our close friends.
One summer 2012 departee is someone I still consider one of the closest and best friends I made in Seoul: She was the friend I could call last minute to hang out; the one who talked me into watching the new Zac Efron movie and Titanic 4D with Korean subtitles. When she left shortly after Luca was born, I felt a little cheated.
But, you know what? She was worth getting to know. I’m so grateful our husbands’ assignments in Seoul overlapped, and I'm thrilled I'll get to see her again in D.C.
I don’t pass her house that often and I don’t know the family inside, so I still think of her and her husband when I see it. To me, it is still their house.
And I’m not alone in feeling this way about friends’ places. We stay attached for a while. One departing couple’s next-door neighbor (half-jokingly) swore to “hate the newcomers,” but just for a little bit.
“Oh, you moved into JBK’s house,” we would say to the new friendly young couple. “Big shoes to fill.”
Then, we became friends with the new couple. The house became their house.
Other houses—ones now filled with families in different life stages; people I haven’t met or connected with—are still, in my mind, the houses of friends who left. Across the street, it’s still Stephanie’s house.
Because Stephanie left a legacy of friendship with me. We took a million walks to the park with her little girls, and with Luca strapped on me. She joined in my excitement over Luca’s birth. She cried with me in the hospital—two different hospitals—when Luca was suffering. We celebrated Thanksgiving together.
But, unlike in most living situations, that legacy of friendship won’t stay in this place. It will travel with me to our next post. Any personal legacy left behind here lasts only as long as others stay. A “legend” is the person who used to cook amazing meat at Fleishfest a whole two years ago.
This week, we said goodbye to more good friends. The wife brought me meals after Luca’s birth and helped me during one of our hospital stays last winter. She was a friend who shared my joy in Luca’s milestones and then, more recently, her joy in her new baby girl. We commiserated over lack of sleep.
Her house is empty now; the curtains are gone. The sign awaits the light paint job that will halfway erase their last name.
Of course, with all the Foreign Service friends we’ve made, there is always the anticipation of reconnecting at some future post, or in D.C. We become a worldwide network of friends that is constantly changing, growing, moving.
After a few weeks, the sign in front of our friends’ place will be thoroughly painted a near-glowing bright white with a new name stenciled in black.
And that’s when things start to feel exciting: All the fresh signs with unfamiliar names. Potential friends.
We are sponsoring a family this year—making sure they have groceries, being friendly when they arrive—and when I checked to make sure their house was prepared, I felt a twinge of excitement. They will arrive in a few days, and for the first time, they will look around at each room, at the setting of what will be their life for the next couple years.
I think back to entering our own home for the first time that frozen January night, and I think ahead to entering new homes at future posts.
The excitement of new beginnings.
In about six months, our neighbors will see our house emptied, our sign painted. They will wonder who will move into the Kims’ place. Maybe our next-door neighbors will resent the newcomers, just for a minute.
Later, Joe, Luca and I will move into someone else’s place in some other city. And then again, I assume, a few years later. And so on. To me, the wonder of the unknown and ever-changing future sounds like fun. An adventure.
I guess the hellos—to new people and places—are why this lifestyle suits me, despite so many sad goodbyes.
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