Ten years ago, we started a new decade, had a new president and explored new places as a family.
In January 2009, I reviewed my resolutions from the previous year as well as reviewed the year month-by-month-play-by-play style, not very unlike this entry.
This may have been the first year we did our Fortune Berries... 12 berries or grapes, one for each month of the year - predicts whether the corresponding month will be bitter or sweet - (all in fun, like a fortune cookie)
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| Sweet optimism |
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| Sweet all year |
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| Sugar coated year ahead |
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| Toot your own horn! |
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| Countdown to a new decade...10..9..8...7... |
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| Fisher praying for Obama and our country on Inauguration Day 2009 |
In January, we went back to Key Largo. We stayed at the Holiday Inn near the dock where The African Queen is kept. Until this time, I had never seen the movie, but now I hold it dear.
I remember staying up well past bedtime, washing everyone's clothes in the hotel's laundry room. I deferred my use of the dryer to a retired couple that only needed to dry one load. We chatted as they processed their clothes and I stayed near our loads of wet clothes.
When I got back to the room, there was quite a falling out over how long it took me to get the laundry done. Exchanges grew tense and an allegation was made that perhaps, I had been doing something more than our laundry.
I remember also wanting to watch a sunset and sunrise while on this trip, but because my laundering activities had fallen under suspicion - despite evidence of baskets overflowing with clean, folded laundry to the contrary - I was denied an early morning companion.
It is such a long drive to Islamorada. The chance to go didn't present itself every day. I decided to get up and go watch the sunrise anyway - alone, despite knowing this action would further cement suspicions against me.
It would be alleged that I left to meet my laundry room lover(s) but it was only myself I took to the docks.
Not until looking through the albums for this challenge did I realize it has been ten years, but this trip has always been a milestone for me.
I made a decision that morning: the sunrise was too beautiful, the pelicans dipping their wings in the glassy water too awe-inspiring for me to let 'No' continue to rob me of opportunity. I would no longer allow the suspicion of things impossible to prove and people impossible to please, keep me locked away.
Allowing suspicion to control my choices was like agreeing I was guilty and deserved the punishment of regret. I would rather bear false accusations and imaginations and live without regret.
I would no longer let the lack of a happy or loving partner discount that beauty and loveliness around me.
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| On that morning, the sun dawned and I stretched my wings. |
Later in the morning, we boarded a glass-bottom boat and bumped into the laundry room couple.
When they recognized me and struck up conversation, my accuser instantly implicated them in my late-night and early-morning escapades. It was insinuated that they must have both played a part in an illicit laundry room tryst with me. Seriously.
It was the gentleman who took these photos as we chatted, and his wife who sent them along via email when they returned home; not for illicit purposes, but because they said as a mom, they guessed not many photos were taken of me. I will always appreciate that they found me worthy of being seen.
More January 2009 albums:
