Saying “Goodbwyes.”

“Why can’t we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together?  I guess that wouldn’t work.  Someone would leave.  Someone always leaves.  Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.” – Charles M. Schulz

For Kimmy 07.28.10 (c) C. Quintana 2010

The history of “goodbye,” according to Answers.com (by the way, I’m not at all sure how accurate Answers.com really is, but I’m going to take its word on this one):

No doubt more than one reader has wondered exactly how goodbye is derived from the phrase “God be with you.” To understand this, it is helpful to see earlier forms of the expression, such as God be wy you, god b’w’y, godbwye, god buy’ ye, and good-b’wy. The first word of the expression is now good and not God, for good replaced God by analogy with such expressions as good day, perhaps after people no longer had a clear idea of the original sense of the expression. A letter of 1573 written by Gabriel Harvey contains the first recorded use of goodbye: “To requite your gallonde [gallon] of godbwyes, I regive you a pottle of howdyes,” recalling another contraction that is still used.

First of all, how much fun is it to say, “I regive you a pottle of howdyes.” Just putting it out there. Why do Americans have to go shortening everything? Pottle is so much more fun to say than “pot” or “drinking vessel”– LAME.  Let’s bring it back, y’all.  Pepsi tried to kickback to the ’80s, we’re kickin’ it way back to the ’70s, the 1570s that is.  Give me a revived logo, I’ll one-up you with a POTTLE of cheer.

Secondly, my favorite version of archaic goodbyes is “good-b’wy” because it looks like it’s a shortening of “good Broadway.”  This seems all too appropriate for my move to New York.  Maybe this is looking way too far into things?  Goodbye Broadway, frat-row, Tulane Clinic parking lot where I learned to drive, hello Columbia University on Broadway (albeit not “that” one, fine with me!) in good ol’ New York, New York.  Or good new, in my case…

If you’re wondering what all this skirting around is leading to, it’s one thing: I stink at goodbyes.  They either turn out entirely too over-dramatic or they don’t hit me until six months after the fact.  So I’m taking this postcardy opportunity to say goodbye in a hello.

Here’s my Oprah moment: I have been so amazingly privileged to meet, work with, become friends with some of the most fantastic human beings on the face of the Earth.  Because I’m in theatre, I like to tell myself– I think we all do– that it’s never goodbye! We’ll always bump into each other again, that’s just the way the business works!  But as so many people I love are beginning to make lives for themselves throughout the country, myself included, I’m realizing things get busy, life gets in the way and before you know it a month is a year.

I make these postcards, in all honesty, selfishly, so that I can keep a little part of you.  So that I can hold onto our connection just a little longer.  For as long as I can, even.  So maybe we don’t talk as much as we used to, maybe we don’t get to see each other everyday, maybe our lives are taking us in entirely different directions– but you’re immortalized to me.

We’ll always have the postcards.  I just wanted to say hello, even if it is on a piece of cardstock, because I don’t think I ever can say goodbye.

Post Script: One of my favorite songs about goodbyes is, ironically enough, from The Muppets Take Manhattan.  I can only assume my life will be like this beloved classic and all my favorite people in the world will end up joining me for a reunion musical on Broadway…