More Questions, Fewer Answers

As we go through life, we often want or need the answers to questions that come up.

Sometimes, the answers are not what we want to hear. For years after my parents' divorce and my mother's remarriage, I held a torch for my father. I was not going to allow the new stepfather to move in and take that revered place my father held in my heart. Yet, over time, that pedestal became cracked as more and more years went by and I heard less and less from dear old dad. Even after I moved to Los Angeles in 1976 to go to college, we seemed to play the cat and mouse game. We'd wait to see who would make the next move. Eventually I asked why he would take so long in contacting my brother and me when we moved around. I had begun to feel he didn't love us, he didn't care, all the typical abandoned-child responses. No, it was that my mother didn't always immediately report our new address to the court or to him directly, so he couldn't contact us.  (Let go of the anger, Jeff.) And, incidentally, it was part of the divorce agreement that we not be taken out of California, he quickly added. (By the time I left for college in 1976, we had lived in a total of four states, and my brother went on to live in another three before age 21.)

What's this? My sainted mother, who instilled in me the fear of the gods if I broke the rules, didn't obey a court agreement? Okay, the world didn't end. She is only human after all, and was doing what she felt best for herself and her two sons, I rationalized.

Sometimes, it's best not to ask the questions at all, since you might not get the answer you are expecting. I recently believed a man was sending me signals, trying to catch my attention. When he succeeded, and I fell for him, he backpedaled. I never confronted him on his sending me mixed signals, because I knew he would do what he needed in order to save face and would just not admit it. So, in my mind he was sending signals, but something scared him. And I just need to take it at that. Oh, well. On to a better man, who will send me signals and be man enough to admit it.

Wouldn't you agree?

So, why did I take this picture? Why not?