Sea Glass, Clouds and Divorce

This photo is from a bit more than two years ago. Does that matter? Of course it does because you and I could easily have died between then and now. But we did not. We've been having skies like this one recently, which is why I brought it back from my archives.

Death is on my mind, because of Raul's status and also because I always feel a heartbeat away myself from mortality.

This sense started when I was eleven, and (finally) diagnosed with rheumatic fever, after two years of fevers and heart pains, and a family doctor who over those two years insisted I must have had a psychological problem, not a health problem.

He was wrong, at least about the health problem.

***

Tonight I am a very happy man, and I'll tell you why.

At work, we have been doing some good things. Once our work concluded tonight, I drove across town to Bernal and picked up my youngest son and youngest daughter.

As we were driving to my house, they decided that for the first time in a long time we should have a pizza night. This is something we used to do every Friday night. We called it Pizza Night at Dad's House, and it was one of the ways they grew comfortable with the tragic reality when their Mom and I broke up.

For kids, divorces are horrible. There really is no way to sugar-coat this. It is an awful fantasy come true. In the case of my kids, they were aware of how much their Mom and I were fighting. They were the secret witnesses of our failing marriage.

No matter what else, I will never, ever forgive myslef for my role in those terrible psychodramas, but neither will I ever forgive my ex-wife. This all could have turned out so much better for our kids, but it did not.

So we are just another of the many broken families, like the shards of sea glass I used to collect along the beach. Little pieces of many colors. The colors of loves lost, hopes unrealized, and trust betrayed.

That is one of the stories that only sea glass can tell. I have been giving my grandchildren parts of my sea glass collections. Bunches of the soft round browns greens, whites, blues, yellows, and reds remind us all of the essential humanity that represents all of us, racially.

People are beautiful.

Back to tonight. Dylan and Julia agreed on a sausage pizza and it was delicious. We saved enough so that when I dropped them back at their Mom's house, a few hours later, that their big brother Aidan could have some too.

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