I took this photo of Mount St. Helens, viewed from Seattle’s Capitol Hill, at sunset on Christmas Eve 2011. It was a coldish day and we were getting ready to celebrate with my now estranged family.
I was feeling like a million dollars. We had landed in the Emerald City barely a month earlier full of hope and happy dreams…. Wife and daughters were elated. I was literally electrified with joy. It all looked and sounded as we had finally crossed into the Land of Dreams.
But Fate had other plans.
Earlier that day I was driving along the seafront under a classic Seattle winter sky, complete with fog touching the skyscrapers. In the ensuing years, I clocked tons of miles across town (and suffered a near fatal accident to boot).
Now, I’m reduced to clicking through all these photos again and again as I struggle with the monster of abandonment, and (apparent) demonization, courtesy of wife and daughters for reasons baffling and unknown.
But there’s always hope…
Merry Christmas Seattle et.al. ... !
There's always good reason. I got ditched by a pair of very close pals in 1978, after giving them my all and then some. Upon reflection, I concluded that I deserved, and earned, my ditching. Estrangement should be an effective lesson, if often cruel one. I survived my infantile hurt feelings and soldiered onward, determined not to make the same erroneous assumptions and barrel in the same reckless manner ever again. Though as they say "Never say never" or "ever" either.
Καλά Χριστούγεννα Ανέστη!