Christmas, 1994 — ©2026 Patrick T. Power
You couldn't possibly tell from the looks on our faces that this would be our last Christmas together as a family. But less than two months later, just before Zachary's tenth birthday, it all would come to a screeching halt.
As I continue to scan negatives from that period in my life—our lives—it is quite difficult to not also continue to process all that happened in the fifteen years leading up to that moment. I recall so many of my own missteps and misdeeds along the way, but mostly, I focus on the lack of real conversation about our marriage. I was, as Maggie Estep has so eloquently put it, an emotional idiot. I was unable to speak to Penny about the things that troubled me, whether it be about work or our relationship. Maybe because I was afraid to appear weak or fragile. Maybe because I was weak. Conversely, she chose not to talk to me, and instead talked to her friends, to an astrologer, and to her therapist. ("My therapist feels sorry for you.") I think she even might have talked to my older brother, who coincidentally left his wife not long before our split.
Anyway, I have been going down this little trip down memory lane for maybe a month or two. It's pretty inevitable, I suppose, to dwell on that period of time as the images appear on my screen, and to think about them and feel something, but instead of continuing to bottle up the thoughts and feelings I've held onto for so many years, I've decided to write about them. I've chosen, however, to not really promote these posts via Facebook... I'll just post and move on. If someone stumbles upon them and reads them, fine, but I'm not going to try to attract eyeballs. These posts are mostly intended for me to put into written form things I perhaps should have been saying with my mouth many years ago.
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