On Never Looking Back…

The dreams have been at it again. So clear during the darkness, but not there when the dawn calls.

Unlike Lot, but like his wife, I have done an awful lot of looking back. My particular cities of Ego and Career were also destroyed by some force outside of my control. However, after leaving them to the destruction of the desert, I turned around and viewed the once grand citadels stone by stone, street by street, and house by house.

What we build is not always what we have envisaged. My cities were built on half-remembered dreams because I had no concept of the reality that I could have possibly created. So when whatever was sent against them found easy pickings, gaping fissures through which to drive an old testament-tank, the walls of my twin edifices not only fell, but they wept with the release of surrender.

No longer would they have to be held together by spit and hope. 

This morning finds me looking back.

I am not searching for my nocturnal natterings but am remembering the birth my eldest daughter. Twenty-one years we have helped her build her own world. Twenty-one years of running, reading, and revising. Twenty-one years of doing that parental pushing into the ‘just-what-may-become’ of having her own dreams.

When I chance to turn my head to look over my shoulder, I do not turn to salt.

I need only a pinch to savour my serving.

And perhaps a little pepper…