When I moved to Seattle in the aftermath of my divorce, I was emotionally broken. \u00a0I had stayed years longer than I should have with a man who would succumb to the ravages of alcoholism a mere year and a half after the marriage ended. \u00a0It was a dark time for me. \u00a0Trying to restart my insurance sales career in a new city, I joined a breakfast networking organization. \u00a0One early September morning, heading down to the waterfront from the Denny Regrade, I walked in fog so thick that I could barely see the sidewalk in front of me.<\/p>\n
I grew up in the desert and didn\u2019t know much about fog other than what I saw in old British moves where, it seemed to me, rain and fog always went together. \u00a0So it was a big shock to me that morning, when once the breakfast meeting was over, I stepped outside to discover that the fog had burned off, and I walked home in brilliant sunlight. \u00a0I went straight home and wrote this poem which can be found in my book of poetry, After the Fire.<\/p>\n
Fog<\/p>\n
I walk in fog
\nIts velvet touch caresses me
\nAnd hides the hurt.
\nBeyond the fog
\nThe sun shines clear and bright
\nI must keep moving
\nI have earned the light.<\/p>\n
I wrote that in September of 1981, and I did keep moving after that. \u00a0In 1985, while doing a poetry reading at a widowed retreat, I met Bill, a man whose first wife, Lynn, died of breast cancer two years to the day after my first husband died. \u00a0They both passed away a few minutes before midnight on New Year\u2019s Eve. \u00a0Our two families had been through some tough times\u2014emotionally and financially. \u00a0Dealing with a longterm chronic illness with a fatal outcome is hard on everyone\u2014the patient, the spouses, and the kids.<\/p>\n
We met, compared notes for a while, relearned how to laugh, and got married six months after meeting. \u00a0People made fun of us about that amazingly brief courtship, but we had both had our lifetime\u2019s worth of dreams blasted into oblivion. \u00a0We had no idea how much time we had, and we didn\u2019t want to waste a minute of it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m writing this on Wednesday, the day before our 32nd wedding anniversary. \u00a0It turns out we had way more time than either of us expected! \u00a0But that\u2019s why, on this day of unexpected and unseasonal sun in mid December, I\u2019m thinking about fog.<\/p>\n
You see, thirty-two years ago this week, the sun came out and a bank of fog settled in over the entire Puget Sound area. \u00a0Bill\u2019s house in south Bellevue was high enough that we were above the fog line. \u00a0We could see the gold statue of Maroni on top of the Mormon Temple and we could see Mount Baker far to the north, but everything else was under that blanket of fog. \u00a0The weather held for days. \u00a0Planes couldn\u2019t land or take off from Sea-Tac. \u00a0The minister performing our wedding flew in from Kansas on a plane that had to land at Boeing Field. \u00a0My parents got as far as LA and then turned around and went back home to Arizona because their flight was canceled. \u00a0Bill\u2019s mother and sister and baby made it to the wedding after spending most of 24 hours at LAX.<\/p>\n
By the time we got back from our all-too-brief honeymoon, the fog had finally dissipated, and there\u2019s been no similar recurrence since\u2014at least not one serious enough to shut down the airports. \u00a0So it feels to me as though in terms of weather and in terms of our lives together, we\u2019ve had 32 years of light. \u00a0There have been challenges along the way, of course, but over all it\u2019s been a long stretch of smooth sailing.<\/p>\n
I have no doubt that some of the people reading this post are looking at the holidays through their own difficult circumstances\u2014their own kind of fog. \u00a0If that\u2019s the case, maybe you need to go back, read through that poem one more time, and imprint it on your heart.<\/p>\n
Keep moving. \u00a0The sun is out there. \u00a0You have earned the light.<\/p>\n
Merry Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I moved to Seattle in the aftermath of my divorce, I was emotionally broken. \u00a0I had stayed years longer than I should have with a man who would succumb to the ravages of alcoholism a mere year and a half after the marriage ended. \u00a0It was a dark time for me. \u00a0Trying to restart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-os","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1517,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions\/1517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}