Of rambling and reunions.
We spent this past Sunday in Llandudno, Wales - a seaside town in the shadow of the Great Orme mountain headland.
After a mandatory visit to the local pier in which we failed to win a Spyro plush from a crane game, and got attacked by seagulls after buying a burger, we took a ride on the Llandudno Cable Car - a several minute ride with picturesque views in every direction, whether looking towards the looming peaks of Snowdonia or towards the church and cemetery.
And we took hundreds of photos, as we slowly walked our way down from the cable car station at the summit back to the town below. (We probably would have taken more, but we were worried about our ability to go everywhere with our bad leg, so made a beeline for town at one point).
It's the closest we've felt to our long estranged Dad, since she [1] walked out of our lives over a decade ago.
She was an avid photographer; visits to mountains, National Trust sites, other parks, camera everywhere she went; exploring, geocaching after technology made it possible. And we never fully considered why, beyond a Flickr account we were never able to find.
Rambling with our cane, snapping like there was no tomorrow... I don't know, it brought some memories back.
We'd been speaking about meeting up for a while; the last time we saw each other was under circumstances where none of us could be ourselves. One day later, out of good luck (and the time we'd originally taken off for our cancelled BLFC trip), I made it happen. And we tearfully got to show each other just how much we'd all changed.
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footnotes
The original draft of this part of the post was written on Sunday night, and used they - since the last time we'd spoken about gender was 2014, at a time she was questioning. Things have changed a bit since then - but she still signs some texts as Dad. ↩︎