Coming to Love - Prologue. Prologue

“Am I in the story yet?”

I smiled at my husband, “Not quite yet, but I’ll soon arrive here for my new job and friends, and we both know where that leads.”

“But this is the part where you try to move on from your crushing loss over the death of Winston.”

“That it is, and it’s still damned hard to write about that.”

“Come here, babe.” My husband pulled me into his arms.

We were still in bed on a cold, rainy morning at our home on the eastern shore of Mercer Island in Lake Washington. Seattle was 12 miles to the northwest, across the I-90 bridge, and Renton, where I worked, was 14 miles southeast.

We bought this beach house three years ago when we decided to live together. Marriage came as a natural progression, and we often marveled at how right it felt for both of us.

I loved to rest in his embrace, safe in the knowledge that at last, I had found the man for me.

We kissed lovingly. At our age, sex was less frequent, less frantic, and longer-lasting. In addition, his situation required preparations that took a little time, so it was never spontaneous.

We weren’t interested in fucking this morning. Lying in bed naked with a warm duvet over us and listening to the rain surge and recede on the metal roof was relaxing—almost hypnotic. You have to like rain, or at least be able to tolerate it, in order to be happy living in the Pacific Northwest.

I thought to myself, I have a really good life here, after all the false starts over the years. I’m one lucky son of a bitch.

My project of writing my autobiography, at least up to this point in my life, was entering its final phase, and I was eager to write it, and perhaps even more eager to have it over with.

Leaving my lover in bed as he lazily drifted in and out of sleep, I crossed the room to my desk and switched on the tiny lamp to continue telling my story.

I paused to gaze out the picture window at the lake and rain, and then touched the mouse, bringing the laptop screen to life. The cursor blinked patiently, waiting for me to continue documenting my experiences in love and loss, success and failure, and most of all, as my mother once told me, living my life as best I can.