Something a little strange on my weekend with The Boy.

My ex had dug up a whole bunch of old pictures. There were a couple from my childhood and early 20's which I thought I had lost and am so pleased to have back. It was neat to go through these with Johnny and share some of my history with him. Another of those great connections I miss out on in the day to day being the "separated" parent. There were w whole slew from our wedding. It's bitter sweet to look at these after so long. To look at those two people who were so in love. You can see it in their eyes as they hold each other for the first times as husband and wife. The gentle touches and easy looks between them.

I have my favorites time travel fantasies where I go back to either Ford's Theater or Dealy Plaza and know in detail what I would do to save each president in each situation. When I try to do the same with my own life I come up a little short. Do I go back to my last marriage and make changes before it started to fall apart? Do I marry her to being with? Do I stay in Rhode Island when she wanted to move to Florida? Do I do the same rescue mission to my first marriage? Do I even start dating the first one? Do I go back further than that?

We all try to map out our lives and try to have a vision of what we want it to be. So much of mine at times feels to have more outside influences than I see in other people's lives. In the midst of my first divorce there was a moment when my ex confronted me with stories running around about me using drugs. If you know me well enough, your eyebrows just jumped. She had heard from someone from someone from someone through my job a rumor to that affect. The only drug I've used with regularity are asthma steroids. However, she took this as gospel. I went to a good friend on the job to hunt this rumor down. I came up on a dead end. To first have my marriage torn apart only four months after the wedding then to have this story passed around made me feel as if there weren't a moment in my life which someone else had more control over than I did.

I know we all have things we have to do in life. Most of us wouldn't be working the jobs we are if we didn't have to. It's just, at times, I still feel that frustration and helplessness I felt back then when I look at where I am in live compared to where I'd like to be.

OK, so there's that big "life retrospective" post I guess I was supposed to do on my birthday two weeks ago! Well, here's another little retrospective; a 39 year old photograph.


June 1965