{"id":3995,"date":"2012-08-16T12:07:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T16:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?page_id=3995"},"modified":"2012-08-16T12:07:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T16:07:32","slug":"waving-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/waving-goodbye\/","title":{"rendered":"Waving Goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why, when we say goodbye<br \/>\nat the end of an evening, do we deny<br \/>\nwe are saying it at all, as in We\u2019ll<br \/>\nbe seeing you or I\u2019ll call or Stop in,<br \/>\nsomebody\u2019s always at home? Meanwhile, our friends,<br \/>\ntelling us the same things, go on disappearing<br \/>\nbeyond the porch light into the space<br \/>\nwhich except for a moment here or there<br \/>\nis always between us, no matter what we do.<br \/>\nWaving goodbye, of course, is what happens<br \/>\nwhen the space gets too large<br \/>\nfor words\u2014a gesture so innocent<br \/>\nand lonely, it could make a person weep<br \/>\nfor days. Think of the hundreds of unknown<br \/>\nvoyagers in the old, fluttering newsreel<br \/>\npatting and stroking the growing distance<br \/>\nbetween their nameless ship and the port<br \/>\nthey are leaving, as if to promise I\u2019ll always<br \/>\nremember, and just as urgently, Always<br \/>\nremember me. Is it loneliness too<br \/>\nthat makes the neighbor down the road lift<br \/>\ntwo fingers up from his steering wheel as he passes<br \/>\nday after day on his way to work in the hello<br \/>\nthat turns into goodbye? What can our own raised<br \/>\nfingers do for him, locked in his masculine<br \/>\npurposes and speeding away inside the glass?<br \/>\nHow can our waving wipe away the reflex<br \/>\nso deep in the woman next door to smile<br \/>\nand wave on her way into her house with the mail,<br \/>\nwe\u2019ll never know if she is happy<br \/>\nor sad or lost? It can\u2019t. Yet in that moment<br \/>\nbefore she and all the others and we ourselves<br \/>\nturn back to our separate lives, how<br \/>\nextraordinary it is that we make this small flag<br \/>\nwith our hands to show the closeness we wish for<br \/>\nin spite of what pulls us apart again<br \/>\nand again: the porch light snapping off,<br \/>\nthe car picking its way down the road through the dark.<\/p>\n<p><em>-Wesley McNair<\/em><\/p>\n<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-3995\" data-postid=\"3995\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-3995 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why, when we say goodbye at the end of an evening, do we deny we are saying it at all, as in We\u2019ll be seeing you or I\u2019ll call or Stop in, somebody\u2019s always at home? Meanwhile, our friends, telling us the same things, go on disappearing beyond the porch light into the space which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3996,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3995\/revisions\/3996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}