MONITOR, Wash. — I am getting ready to make the turn and head for the house.
My return to North Texas will commence in a couple of days, after I visit with a couple of family members and we get caught up on what’s happening in our lives.
They know my story, as I have been chronicling it on this blog.
To be candid, I am ready to start the return to familiar haunts … not that those I have seen already aren’t plenty familiar to these 73-year-old eyes.
The constant rain that has fallen during my entire stay in the Pacific Northwest is maddeningly familiar to be sure. I grew up in Portland, where it seemingly drizzles forever and then some. Yes, I also saw old friends, five high school classmates, plenty of family, my godmother (who also is family, according to Orthodox Church tradition) and some old haunts.
But it’s time to make the trek back to Collin County. I’ll take a different route than the one that brought me to this place on the eastern slope of the Cascade Range.
What’s more, I am going to travel along some highways that I’ve never seen before. I trust that my late bride, Kathy Anne, will smile in approval as Toby the Puppy and I wind our way back to the house.
More family will greet us in the Texas Hill Country and some friends await us in West Texas.
This journey was intended for me to simply get away from the nearness of the event that broke my heart in early February. I will miss Kathy Anne forever and then some.
But I am ready to start assembling my life for the still-unknown journey that awaits.