Although I haven’t written any comments these last weeks, be I surely followed your trip around the IJsselmeer with great interest.
After reading your first blog I was in shock. Don’t worry, it’s not my intention to rub in your weight, I just want to explain what happened in my mind after this info was sunken in.

Of course the last few years I noticed a slight change. You have always been a more or less 240 pounder and in the pictures Donna showed me I noticed you had gained even a bit more. But, your poses in the pictures were always taken partly in the dark, or you acted funny behind curtains, wore covering coats or you were blocked by other people … I wasn’t blind, but the gravity (sorry pun) of the transformation was excellently hidden.
Especially the load of the shock, made me comprehend I had to admit something to myself. It accelerated my suppressed thoughts. The worries about your health made me realise how much you are still a part of me.

We both know that I’ve always missed my sudden interrupted life in Virginia. It was my own decision to move to the Netherlands for the birth of Donna, and I was expecting our bond would grow. It did. But it didn’t replace my homesickness. Somewhere in the back of my mind I never got rid of the feeling that I was on the wrong place. Although I loved you and our baby to bits, a little voice told me this was not the plan for my own life.

After almost 16 years Donna started to need us less. She was such an independent kid and we knew soon she would leave the nest. She had advanced plans for studying at the other end of the country.
The job offer I got from my former boss in Virginia, came a bit too early, but it was a big chance for me to go back to the USA on a comfortable base. I went. To find out if my nagging feeling was right.
I have enormously enjoyed the company of my old friends and family and Donna visited me twice a year for a longer and intense period.
But for the second time, I felt I was on the wrong spot.

“Did I do the right thing to leave you and Donna? Was it my departure that caused so much unbalance? And after these 3 years, could I be able to reunite our parting ways?”
In other words; Do you allow me to cook for you again?
For, let’s say … another 16 years?