Goodbye เชียงใหม่

I thought about writing a Good Night Moon type entry, but I thought I would cry too much. Today is my last day in Chiang Mai, and the last one in my parents' house here. Little things like realizing that I can erase their computer network from my preferred networks make me tear up.

My parents' house is on the flight path for Chiang Mai International Airport. My mother tells people she never wants to live near an airport again, because the sound of planes makes her too sad. When I lived here, it was a ritual to go to the airport to see people off. I think it still is, but my brother never goes. My mom says he stands outside and watches our planes take off from our yard.

We went around the city to visit all the houses we've lived in over the last decade and a half. It was very strange. Our first house is surrounded by university dorms and seems much smaller than I remembered. The second house looked pretty much the same but the roads had been repaved and a giant fence constructed to separate the muubaan from the swamp near by. The third house, the one we lived in the longest, that was a shock. No one has lived in it since my parents moved out because of the floods my junior year of college. And it is all over grown. The gate is inaccessible and only the top windows are visible from the street. It hosts a veritable jungle. At the time I thought I was okay, but the more I think about it the sadder I feel. There's no going back there, apparently.

In some ways, this final visit doesn't feel so final. Because of my research I know I will probably come back. But it won't be "home" anymore in the same way. I have plenty of invitations from various aunts and uncles to stay should I visit. But in a few years, five or ten, very few of them will still be here, probably. My school will be moving from the building it has always been in in the next few years. Everything changes.

The cat has been very strange and whiny this whole visit. My personal theory is that she knows my parents are leaving and is afraid of being left behind. I wonder about that too. They want to bring her but she is old, and has lived in the tropics her whole life. We are all afraid the move would kill her, or that winter would. I hate these choices.

And so, goodbye, Chiang Mai. I will miss your sunshine and your humidity and Doi Suthep and the markets. I will miss the rice paddies and the funny signs and the lovelorn pop music. I will miss the living green. I will come back, but nothing will be the same. Or rather, in the words of a t-shirt I always meant to buy, it will be: "Same same. But different."