Thirty years, four duty stations

The first posting was supposed to last two years. It lasted five, and by the time it ended the idea of going back to where I started had quietly stopped making sense.

What I remember best is not the work itself but the people it put me beside. Colleagues from a dozen countries, most of whom I have lost touch with, a few of whom I still write to. You learn quickly that competence travels and that patience travels further.

Coming home was harder than leaving had been. The city had carried on without me, as cities do, and the professional life that had defined thirty years ended on a particular Friday with very little ceremony.

What I did not expect was how much of it would come back through conversation. Sitting with others who had been through the same thing, the years stopped feeling finished and started feeling like something worth passing on.