My Blog For You
I picked her up at the airport, I think it was a Thursday maybe Friday. We did the normal catching up on the latest in her world, and then what was going on with me. We got to the house and got her all settled in upstairs in the guest bedroom. Rebecca could only stay a few days as she had to get back to work the following Monday. As her stay progressed, I could feel the tension in me, as we came closer to the end of her stay with me in the Northwest. With each moment that went by it was bubbling up and slowly was overflowing in me. Rebecca and I were coming back that Saturday afternoon from a day of sightseeing in Seattle. We went to the most unusual of unusual museums in downtown Seattle now called the “MoPop”, “Experience Music Project “EMP”, or “Museum of Pop Culture”. Seeing this museum with her was a lot of fun. As we explored inside, I could see just from observing her reactions to the odd displays that she had grown a tremendous amount since that little girl I said farewell to, years before. I had not seen Becca since we left for Washington. I was so excited to see the sites with Becca as I had never taken the time to do any of these since moving to the Seattle area. One of the other sites we saw while in Seattle was to ride The Duck”. This was a short walk across the street from the MoPop museum to this attraction. “The Duck” is a short trip, maybe an hour or so. You pay your ticket and get aboard. It is a ride in a converted WWII aquatic transportation vehicle with a tour guide/driver who drives the vehicle around the city showing off the Puget Sound buildings, Football and Baseball Stadiums, lakes and the odd or unusual “one of a kind” features of downtown Seattle. It is all done in a WWII army transportation vehicle called the “Duck”. In WWII, these vehicles were used for transporting materials, gear, and of course soldiers to wherever the action was. This combination amphibious/land craft, school bus that goes both on land and in water had bench seats like in busses installed for tourists to come and be taken around the city. It was incredibly fun especially the ride down the boat launch into the waters of Lake Washington around Elliot Bay. They took us around showing a few sites of where they shot this movie in this house or used this part of the bay for this show, stuff like that. Real touristy and very expensive for sure. A once in a lifetime must do, but not a regular stop by no means. Moving on…
As our day concluded we got some groceries and drove that long drive from Seattle to Sultan that I had made so many times before when I lived in Monroe. Now I was even farther out from Monroe east on Hwy 2 in the town of Sultan. We got thru our trip back thru Monroe when the conversation started to get quiet in the car as we had talked about everything and frankly, we were running out of things to talk about. Now about that time that feeling started to come over me again. I could not shake it off. The only thing I could think of to do was pull over, stop the car, and look at Rebecca. Once I found a place in the road I pulled off and parked. Before I could look her in the eye, I just began to sob, crying kind of uncontrollably as I remember it. I do not cry easily but these feelings of regret, loss, frustration, feelings of being so, so very sorry. I was almost to the point of begging her for forgiveness and repenting of what I felt, I had done to her. In my mind and heart, I had “abandoned” Becca. Leaving her, leaving California, moving to Washington to help Cheryl, but leaving most of all, our life together. Our life together was always in small bite size pieces, if you get my mindset and drift. When in California, these visits, and times together, were always short, always dropping off, always picking up because of the separation and eventual divorce of her mom and me. Never a chance for Becca and me to just be…just relax…just breathe… I knew the move to Washington was not a deliberate act of sabotage against Becca. After all, one of the reasons we were leaving the Southern California area was just to give Cheryl a chance to live. In a sense I was laying down my life so that she could live. I would never put that on Rebecca but again that was how I was feeling. It was catching up with me. I think for years I had pushed it down, those feelings, that part of my heart. Well, it was all coming back and in thinking back I am so glad it did this because I got a chance to say and speak my heart to Becca. She was, after all my daughter and I love her very much and still love her today very much. After getting my composure I remember asking her to forgive me for all of it. I really do not remember the words she used but it felt like she accepted my apology and wanted me to know that everything was “OK”. There was not much else to say after that. I believe we had said it. We have never spoken about this time since. When looking back, one might think that you never get everything said, all the feelings out on the table and verbalized out loud. Probably what was said is all I could think of to say for that time. It was my hope in looking back that Becca knew I cared and loved her deeply. I did not really have tools then to be able to sew it up but maybe because time is so precious, how we spend it is what is important. I think the emotional hemorrhaging that was going on in me was legitimate but frankly feels still very “un-healed” even today. Becca and I, it is my feeling have a strained relationship. I take the blame for that in every way. Nobody wins in a divorce. I don’t care what anyone says. Divorce is an evil, vile, invisible, and terrible “scar” to the soul in anyone’s life. It affected not only the four of us, me, Robin, Robert, and Rebecca, but our extended family and friends. Most of all hurt by our choice to divorce, was our kids, Robert, and Becca. In Robert’s case it is very well hidden. In Becca it is even more deeply concealed. I don’t want to go off on a tangent here, but just to share that I can…if I look deeply enough, listen carefully enough, I can hear that “deep hurt” Robin and I put on our children…Moving forward…
More Next Week
