The one where Bill thinks back

Here I am, riding the ferry, across the Mississippi River, from the East Side of New Orleans to the French Quarter. Looking at the City, which incredibly, is below the berm. That was always amazing to me, a whole city below the water line. I am holding my Wife's hand as she calls back home to check in on how our 10 month old daughter is doing, My mom was watching her.

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The moon is out, but so are the clouds, they are battling, but ultimately, they reach a truce. The moon is not fully covered, but nor is it fully hidden. The ride across the river wasn't that slow relatively speaking, only about thirty minutes, but time was sneaking past us much faster than that, without us even knowing.

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There I am, sitting on the front porch of the first house smoking a cigar, talking about how our life is supposed to be. A Life of abundance, A life of adventure and travelling. A life worth living. Together. With our kids. With my wife as a family.

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Then there was the work, the struggle to get promoted, to earn more, to save, to make everything comfortable. To compete, to make something out of my career. To be worthy. To do what I needed to do, to make it all come true.

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It was a building type of thing. Build a life, build happiness, make something, but enjoy the process along the way. Which ties this remembrance of mine, back to those trips to New Orleans, also the various trips to New York, the time we went back to my college town, and the time on that porch. I remember buying the big four bedroom home together, having those kids of ours, building the landscape by the back deck as a team. The Christmases x 10, all the Thanksgivings, the welcoming in of the multiple New Years.

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It all died. She will tell you it was that one night, I will tell you that was just the final period at the end of the chapter that she had been writing for several years prior to that. It doesn't matter though. It ended up in complete and total failure.

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Life goes on though. Life keeps plugging away , like those nights crossing the river in New Orleans, It may seem to take forever to get from the one side to the other, but in reality, it was only about thirty minutes. Nearly four years have gone by now, but the ferry in New Orleans still goes from one side to the other, about every thirty minutes. One side to the other, four years worth of picking up and dropping off, but now when I ride it, I ride it alone.

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My Mom is dead now. My daughter is almost fourteen. We also have a ten year old son. The Life of abundance is still somewhere off in the future. The divisiveness divided and the division is really just a form of subtraction, its just less now.

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