That Feel

This thing is unbearably close now.
Everything has started to take on this weird significant feeling.
I will be in Spain one week from now, so that means that every normal little piece of routine is pretty much coming to an end in the next seven days and something new is going to replace it for a good while.
On the one hand, I'm trying to mark that significance, but on the other I'm just trying to keep my stuff together, and the more I think about it, the crazier it all seems.
Every once in a while I remember the Camino.  I remember it's feel and the smell of it, and the ancient-ness.  And I am less worried, less afraid, because I know that out there on the way there is a clarity of purpose that does not, really cannot exist in anything like an ordinary day.
Yesterday afternoon as the kids and I hiked around the lake, I was thinking that opening scene from Apocalypse Now, where Martin Sheen is in Saigon waiting, reflecting on how he is here in a hotel, "getting soft."  There is a sort of dread and an impatience with the waiting.  I know for a fact that once the "mission" is underway, a lot of this will evaporate, but for now, I'm trying not to numb up or stifle this feeling, because I think it's important to honor the sanctity of these ordinary moments.
Right now the kids are both absorbed in their own little electronic worlds, sitting on the couch in my office.  I can look over at them any time, and I'm finding that I feel like that is a blessing.  Why?  Because I know, for over a month, I will not see them.  I will not have to scold them for being vegetables or not eating their vegetables.  I will not be able to tuck them into bed at night or have to drag them out of bed in the morning.  It makes me (sort of) cherish even the annoying things about parenthood.
Maybe that is important work for a pilgrim as well, learning to see with an Ecclesiastes sort of realism: "there is nothing better than to enjoy your life and take pleasure in your toil."
Is that it then?  Is the first lesson of a grand adventure to truly appreciate all that you leave behind?  Or is what I'm feeling now just a reflection of the depth that absence will teach?
Anyway, here we go.