Fine

This morning, I woke up at 4:22. Too early. At least I stuck to my news diet. Instead of tuning into Mika & Joe on my Sirius XM app, I listened to an Insight Timer meditation. I closed my eyes and I breathed. But by 5:30am I lost my willpower and broke my diet.

I’ve been broken and lost for a while now. I went missing November 8th 2016. It was election night and Bill’s birthday. We were eating dinner at Shade in Redondo Beach. We were seated on the patio, facing the harbor, but we kept looking over at the television in the bar. I lost all hope during the oysters. After dinner we went home, turned on the TV and watched until we couldn’t watch any longer.

That year was the first time in 11 years we didn’t host Thanksgiving. Only because the next day we left on a cruise through the Panama Canal with Bill’s aunt, uncle and father, Ed. We weren’t thrilled with the way Ed had voted, but back then, although curious and even a little resentful, we could agree to disagree.

One night on the cruise the subject came up. We were walking around deck 7 with Ed. We did that every night, walk around deck 7. Bill’s aunt and uncle were a lap behind, so we stopped at the stern to wait.

“Who knows,” Bill said, “he may do good things.”

“He’ll be fine,” Ed said. “He can run a business, he’ll run the country just fine.”