Poring over old bones. Spring has come

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I've wasted much of the last month thinking about daughter Naomi and my failed first family. 

Nothing good has come of it.  My former wife, Mary Ann, snubbed and frustrated me at every turn  She must really hate me for having escaped and started a successful second family.  She did not ask when would be convenient to schedule Naomi’s memorial service, or even tell me that she had set one one up.  After I told a mutual acquaintance that I had found it online, I imagine that person told Mary Ann that it was a scandal not to invite the father of the deceased to the ceremony.  I got a minimal invitation– to write some words that somebody would deliver on my behalf. 

I wrote this six-minute script, to be read by her brother John.  The same mutual acquaintance told me it was not delivered.  I have received no apology.  No communication whatsoever.  Nobody will tell me if either of our two grown children, Jack and Suzy, were at the service.

Jack, Naomi and Suzy had cut me off a dozen years ago.  Since nobody was open to communication, the only way I could hope to contact them was to post my views on my web site.  Already in 2015 I had written "Little did I realize when I left in 2006 the magnitude of the train wreck I was jumping clear of. All I knew was that the directions my children were taking were beyond my control, and they were not promising."  Things only went downhill over the next eight years.

Once when she briefly reconnected Naomi told me that other members of the family were upset at what I had written.  My answer was that I would be glad to correct anything that was wrong, and to take my posts down if there were other channels of communication.  I got nothing.  I remained cancelled.

That's where we stand. One daughter dead, presumably by the jabs, never having found happiness in life. My firstborn son unemployed, so far as I know living on the streets in Portland. The second daughter resolutely single and approaching middle-age, working at a entry-level job in a faraway country. Mary Ann herself is consumed with anger, approaching retirement age without having developed a life outside of work. All of them are presumably vaxxed to the max, fearing and perhaps feeling the impact on their health.

As for myself, I need to dismiss those three wasted decades from my mind and focus on the new family that God has given me. I wish I could say that poring over the bones of the past gave me new insights, but it does not. I need to have the discipline to simply let it go. Let it go. Let it go.

On to brighter things! The whole family went yesterday to the ArtTalkers Toastmasters club.  Most of the women in the club are single.  They love talking with the kids.  These professional women must look at Oksana with interest and perhaps a bit of envy.  She has chosen a traditional path through life and it is working. 

Zoriana is bicycling to kindergarten in the spring weather.  She has slept on my floor the last couple of nights, crawling in bed with me to snuggle just before dawn.  Last night Eddie and I made a BBQ of sausages and mackerel.  Marianna talks a mile a minute.  Dad's learning a bit of baby Ukrainian, and she's learning that English usually works better.

Eddie has been blasting through his math.  Here's an interesting problem from his book.  A departing hotel guest hands the bellhop four keys to the doors of a four-room suite.  The keys are not labeled.  What is the maximum number of times the bellhop has to try a key to be sure he knows which key goes with which of the four doors?

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man has to let the past be resolutely gone and focus only on the future.  Keeping the kids focused on their future should be his full-time job.

Graham