“Where’s that restaurant you always used to go to…where you took us that one time?” my sister Kate asked me last week as our group of five sat in the back lounge of the local ice cream shop, slurping the last of our melty sundaes and coming down from an exhilarating (at least for me!) three-hour tubing expedition down the Delaware River on a 100-degree day.
Incidentally, it was my first time tubing, even though I’ve lived in Bucks County, PA, for a quarter-century. Considering I fancy myself such a devoted nature girl, I’m ashamed it took me so long to get my ass out there; the instant I plopped into the plastic donut and started floating off on the current under a pristine sky dotted by hawks and eagles on the wing, it was truly a “where have you been all my life?” moment, not unlike an alcoholic’s first drink. You don’t have to ask me how I know.
As I sit down to write this, I’m seven years sober, and Kate’s question about the restaurant is relevant here, because it forced me to pause in the midst of my reinvented life, look back, and remember how things used to be.
I don’t do that very much anymore. Seven years is long enough to start forgetting, which any addict understands is a beautiful reward that comes with a side of risk. They who forget history are doomed, and all that…
Continue reading “Seven”
Jen Wielgus Journalism 