It is as if the bright colors of this city muted in my eyes to become tinged with the a certain boredom and sadness. I still like it when I visit but it is never like that first time. Like me the city has changed over time - maybe it was a more exuberant then than it is now - maybe the change is mutual, not one-directional. Uncle B lives in Kirkland. I knew him since I was a child, he was close to my parents then but not anymore. I never fully understood what caused the rift between them.
In my single years, he visited me in my apartment a couple of times and crashed on the couch in the living room - which in hindsight was a bit strange. He would bring me a bottle of wine and we drank it together sitting in the balcony after J had gone to bed. We talked about lot of things and I was glad to have conversation with an adult that was not about my problems. I thought nothing of it then - my mind was thrumming with the noise of things I needed to get done to keep my head above the water. The appropriateness of a married man, close to my father's age choosing to spend the night at my apartment was not the most pressing problem I had to deal. If he was trying to get me interested, I did not have the mental capacity to notice.
At some point, I ceased to be single and I did not see Uncle B much - he did stop by when he came to my town for work. Uncle B is a childhood memory gone sour - I don't know what to make of him. He have me a lot of useful parenting advice, insights into how the "system" works in America and ways to navigate it. He used to be one of the people I could call when I had questions about things. But there was something off about his visits and those late night chats in the balcony. Was he always predatory and I was just too clueless to notice or was it that he found his opportunity when I was most vulnerable and I luckily remained just as clueless. Whatever the case, I have never contacted him when in Seattle. Yet, the facts are he never did anything that crossed the line - it was never clear to me what his end-game was if any.
No comments:
Post a Comment