After 16 months N is out of Iraq, in Syria, and on her way to the U.S. Long story? Sure. And as I tried to put it together I realized I had started writing the story of my life. Egads!
Pick One Thing and Stick to it, Part 1: N reaches Syria
By Bruce Wallace (PT Witte in Second Life)
www.121Contact.typepad.com
PT@bru-mar.com
To write
To write the story
Of a life
One must begin at the beginning.
I was born on an emergent outwash plain; at the Eastern tip where George Washington taught the Brits about American ingenuity. Of course Washington was pre-American. I am post-American.
I got a call from N today. She had just hit Syria after 16 months of figuring out how to get here for a couple of months of well-deserved vacation from the hell we have wrought in Iraq. The occupation plods on and so many, many are devastated by it. Don’t even think of the kids. Think of N out of Baghdad; out of Iraq; I wonder what she’s thinking. I know she’s not sleeping.
In this post-American world Jeremy and Rebecca are navigating their way through a wedding with no road-map. They eschew the traditional; each in their own way. It is a hard road they have chosen. They will learn much from it. There is much joy to be had on the new road.
Mark is heading out to L.A. for a V.C. meeting. It is not hard to think of him as the CEO of a visionary company.
Omg, I can’t believe it. Marilyn is gone from us only one year this coming 29th. Jeremy is getting married. Mark is flying high. I am doing some really good work. And how very often I seek her advice down under the bridge where we scattered her ashes and where I’ve been visiting each month. Sometimes we communicate. Sometimes I’m just hanging out with the seagulls. Always there are good memories that blossom from this simple time.
I think I first looked to Marilyn for advice more than anything else. Well, there were raging hormones and teen-age madness and totally smitten stuff, but there was more to it than that Right from the beginning. We were so totally locked into each other. I can only now begin to see things from Mar’s point of view. I never much really thought about that before. We each offered what the other needed and this despite the amazingly different people that we were. How we fought! For years and years until we finally understood the dance, its trapping loops, and the simple ways out.
“Ooh, there’s a loop. We’re in one,” one smiles.
And the other smiles, too, and a loop is broken. Just for the moment, of course, but with practice…
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