Saying Goodbye (sending a message from the heart)

We talk a lot about travel with kids — packing lists, sleep routines, airport snacks.
But there is another part of traveling that no one really prepares us for:

The goodbyes.

Most of our trips aren’t to new places or big adventures. They are to the people we love most.

To Buffalo, where my parents still live.
To my brothers and all of Keira’s cousins — a full house, loud laughter, beds everywhere, the kind of chaos that feels like home.
To Florida, where my parents stay part of the year and the days are warm and slow.
To Kent Island, where my closest friends vacation and where Keira and her “besties” run barefoot in the yard until the sun dips behind the water.

These trips are full.
Full of familiarity.
Full of comfort.
Full of the kind of belonging that you feel more than you describe.

And when it’s time to leave… it’s hard.
Every time.

Keira usually cries.
Sometimes I do too.

She says it in the simplest, truest way:

“I don’t want to leave. I don’t want the fun to be over.”

And I get it — because goodbyes are not really about leaving a place.
They’re about leaving a feeling.

The feeling of being surrounded by people who know your stories without needing explanations.
The feeling of being part of a unit — cousins, grandparents, friends who might as well be family.
The feeling of being held by home — in whatever form home takes.

Lately, we’ve been talking about goodbyes in a new way.
We talk about how feelings can travel. How love is not something that gets left behind.

One day, when we were getting ready to leave, I reminded Keira that it was almost time to say goodbye.

She paused, thought for a moment, and said:

“All we have to do is put a message in our hearts and the kisses will send them their way.”

Then she blew a kiss into the air.

“See mom, I just sent a message to you.”

So now, when we leave a place — whether it’s Buffalo, or Kent Island, or Florida — we stop for a moment.

We close our eyes.
We put a message in our hearts.
And we send it with a kiss.

It doesn’t make the goodbye easy.
But it makes it gentle.

Because the truth is:
Goodbyes are hard because love is real.

And if we are lucky enough to have places and people that make leaving difficult —
then we are lucky enough, too, to have hearts big enough to carry them with us.

Everywhere we go.