Was It The Right Thing To Do?

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Joined: 01 Dec 2022, 15:44

Was It The Right Thing To Do?

Post by admin » 01 Dec 2022, 18:38

I do not have anyone else to talk to, not compared to our conversations.Having you here has been as close to having a son as I have ever experienced.Dolores .When things get hard, and they will, you will sometimes wonder if you should have stayed here.When that happens, I want you to remember what I am about to tell you.You will find a guide.You have a path ahead of you, a path I cannot travel.You have the necessary spiritual resilience.Spiritual resilience .Her eyes had already brightened.Standing firmly by the side of the road, she radiated the serenity she had layered into herself through decades of study and reflection.I sped away, unable to think.I had never met anyone with such wisdom.When I stopped at the red light, I slammed the white steering wheel with both hands to stem the tears spilling down my cheeks.Stars in the Salish SeaThe next week, at night, I slipped letters under the doors of the president, the dean, and the chair of the Department of Mathematics.I had already officially resigned, but I wanted to leave each of them with a final expression of gratitude.Especially President Phil Phibbs, who had made the extraordinary offer of creating a new department for me.If such an offer had come at any moment in the previous three years, I would have leapt at it.But by the time he spoke to me, my imagination had already left Tacoma.I did not know how to explain any of this to him.I simply thanked him for his generous spirit and his vision of what a university could be.When I got home, Denise and I and Thomas Ian left the city driving west on 21st Street, south on Proctor Avenue to 6th Avenue, where we headed west again.We passed Goofy Goose, the hamburger joint, then Reman Hall, the detention center for adolescents.We glided quietly down the long hill that became the Narrows Bridge, which carried us across to the Olympic Peninsula.At one point out on Highway 16, we heard muffled explosions somewhere off in the distance, possibly from Fort Lewis.I knew the sounds from my childhood in Lakewood but was surprised to learn that they traveled across the waters of Puget Sound all the way here.Army staged war games in the vast forests owned by the military, using mortar rounds that were fake, of course, but just as loud as real ordnance.But it was hollow laughter.What came to me was a story of a group of zoologists who rescued a dying monk seal, nursing it back to health.When it was deemed ready to survive on its own, it was lowered into the ocean in the release cage, darting from one side to the other with eyes opened wide as the wire doors were lifted.Instead of rushing away, it lingered in its prison cell and had to be pushed out.Just so did I now find myself.Constraints were dropping away.Phil was no longer my president.I had no job, no place in society.Dad’s ambition for his only son, that too was gone.After we crossed the Narrows Bridge, I groaned when I noticed the fuel gage just above empty.There was probably enough to make it, but to be sure I started gliding down all the hills to save gas.Near the bottom, I let the clutch out and the engine gave a loud crack, like a backfire, and died.We had enough momentum to turn left off the highway and cruise over the short bridge that separated the mainland from the narrow spit of land.I pulled onto the shoulder of the road and tried to start it, but it wouldn’t catch.After several more attempts, the battery started winding down.The machine was dead.Tacoma was miles behind us.Key Center was just about as far ahead.It would take hours to walk either direction.

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