Am I There Yet?: The Loop-de-loop, Zigzagging Journey to Adulthood

by Mari Andrew

There were so many times I felt like I was sitting around waiting. So many times I was meandering around with a heavy heart, mourning the loss of a happier season without any idea what would come next, and when. I can see now that those were the seasons of loss—my own personal autumns—and they were some of the most important.

Fall is a season of loss, but it shows you up front what you’re losing.

They say saudade is unique to Portuguese, impossible to define in English. Nostalgia gets pretty close, but saudade is more complicated. It’s the remnant of gratitude and bliss that something happened, but the simultaneous devastation that it has gone and will never happen again. It marries the feelings of happy wistfulness and poignant melancholy, anticipation, and hopelessness. It’s universally understood by a cross-ocean culture with a constant feeling of absence, a yearning for the return of something now gone.

But a really good date will make all the unanswered texts and pre-dinner jitters worth it. It’s like acting in a play where your role is the very best version of yourself, and you already know that the final line in the scene will be, “I’d like to see you again.”