Forced Off The Path

It’s happened to all of us. 

We’re walking along, oblivious, perhaps whistling, thinking that tomorrow will be relatively the same as yesterday, and suddenly, inexplicably, there’s this huge rock blocking our path.

We have choices, of course.  We can stand and look at it, curse it, wish it away, refuse to believe it’s there, even go back the way we came -– but ultimately, if we want to find the path again, we have only two choices.  We either climb over it or go around it.

I’ve realized that in life, I’m a “go around it” kind of person.  I know plenty of “climb over it” people -– “high-energy, love-a-challenge, bring-it-on” sorts of people, but that’s not really me. 

First I stand open-mouthed in some naïve disbelief, then I sit down and have a long think.  Sometimes it requires a good cry, some bruised fists, yelling, or even a fitful sleep right there in the road.  But sooner or later, I know I have to move.

Your rocks might look like mine –- broken heart, dear one’s death, paralyzing disappointment, lost job, failed test, missed opportunity, disappeared friend, hasty word -– rocks take so many forms, but they all behave the same. They stop you in your tracks for a time.

But I’ve realized there’s a whole undiscovered world in that soft earth to the left and the right of the hard-packed, well-worn thoroughfare.  In fact, some people spend their whole lives out there. They got pushed off the path, and liked it so much that they never went back.  Imagine!

When I was in high school, I was on the drill team.  I spent my first years moving up the ranks and fully expected to take my Captain’s test, pass it, and wear that extremely cute uniform at football games and pep rallies for my senior year.

During my test, we were given the command to turn right, and I turned left instead. 

It was a boneheaded mistake, brought on by unexpected nervousness and the size of the gallery watching –- but the result was that I had committed to the move and had to finish it.  So the group of girls I was testing with all went one way in the huge gym, and I went the other, alone.

HUGE rock.

Needless to say, I wasn’t chosen as one of the Captains.  I spent the first part of my senior year watching the girls who knew left from right, marching in their cute uniforms and feeling my life was essentially never going to be really good again.  (Admittedly, I was a bit of a dramatic teenager.)

But a strange thing happened.  Once I reconciled myself to the fact that what was done was done, I began to encounter that world that lay outside my expectations.  I spent Saturdays driving up the coast to Malibu with friends instead of sweating through marching practice in the hot sun.  Football games could now be enjoyed full-view from the stands instead of from the flat expanse of the field.  With more time at my disposal, I joined Girl’s League and discovered a life-long love of volunteering.

I’ll try not to get carried away with the metaphor (though I fear I already may have) and say that the spongy, sweet-smelling ground off the path has unique and fragrantly colorful flowers -- but I will say that in my life since then, every rock, no matter how terrible it initally seemed, has come with gifts.

I wonder sometimes –- if I had I turned right that day, would I be different now?  Probably. Would my life be better? Worse?  Who knows?  I only know that I don’t regret that missed turn anymore.  I was stepping off into who I am today.

So I try to bless the rocks and put on my hiking shoes a little faster than I used to.  And I try to remember that sometimes the way off the path is the path itself.

~~~~~

The Golden Times

When I was in college, a group of close friends and I spent a weekend at a cabin in the mountains.  Before you ask -- yes, alcohol was involved, but not an inordinate amount.  There was an old jeep in the shed, and we all piled in and took a slow drive down a long country road canopied with trees.  I can still remember leaning back with the sun dappling my face through the leaves, a soft warm wind blowing, looking up at the blue sky, listening to stories being told and the answering laughter of friends.

That was one of what I like to call the “Golden Times.”   Those moments -- or if we’re lucky, longer – that somehow attain a sort of perfection.   I knew it was special, but I had no idea that over thirty years later, I would still remember exactly how it felt. 

Sometimes they’re happy accidents.  For our wedding day, barefoot on the beach, Robert and I hoped to be in some privacy with our small group of family and friends at the water’s edge at sunset.  But at the last minute our pastor said it would be too difficult for some elderly relatives to make it down the long stretch of sand. 

Robert turned to me and smiled, and said he would marry me anywhere.  So we stood on Venice Beach (not in Italy, sadly, but it’s lovely in Los Angeles, too) in full view of all the balconies of a busy hotel, and within earshot of the many people enjoying the last of the spring sunshine by biking, rollerblading, jogging or strolling on the walkway. 

What we hadn’t counted on was the respectful silence of the crowd drawn to the ceremony – and after being in our own world until we kissed and turned around, we’d had no idea that the hotel balconies had gradually filled, and the walkway was nearly choked with people who had stopped to watch.  They now raised glasses, waved, smiled broadly, and gave us a smattering of applause.

When we went to get in our car after the reception, two women stopped us enthusiastically. “You’re the bride and groom! We watched you get married!!” 

Strangers being touched by strangers.  A Golden Time.

At a Rick Springfield concert a few years ago, the man himself walked down the middle of the seats in the audience and ended up standing on my chair to finish the song, giving Robert the opportunity to play air guitar only inches away from him, and as for me… well, what would you do if you were that close and had listened to “Jessie’s Girl” about a million times? 

Golden.

Other times sparkle in my memory.  Holding Thomas as a baby.  Watching the first snow fall on Thanksgiving Day.  Reaching out to take Robert’s hand in a peaceful silence on a long drive from Idaho to Los Angeles.  Kicking chunks of ice at twilight on a frozen lake with friends, watching the irridescence skitter along as the moon rose.  Listening to Andrea Bocelli sing arias from “La Boheme” with my mother, tears glistening in her eyes and mine.

By definition, a Golden Time has an end.  It can’t be sustained.  Otherwise it becomes day-to-day life, which can be very, very good, but simply isn’t that diamond that stands out among the lesser stones.

How do we know when it’s over?  I’m afraid the answer is that most of the time, we don’t.  When is the last hug, the last kiss, the last time of making love, the last goodbye when we hang up the phone, never to hear that person’s voice again?

After 9/11, there were so many stories about husbands and wives pecking each other on the cheek in the morning, casually saying, “See you tonight,” or “Pick up some milk on your way home,” or similar banalities.  If they’d only known.

I never say goodbye to Robert without telling him I love him.  I try to leave places and people without “if onlys”…”if only I’d hugged him”, ”if only I’d told her how pretty she looked”, ”if only I’d said what he means to me…”

And now, why is this all on my mind today?

Two and a half years ago, I started on Twitter in a unique way, centered around creativity and play with a group of people that came together organically and naturally, acting out characters from a television show.  We made ourselves and lots of other people laugh, and created relationships across oceans and time zones that could never have happened otherwise.  There were misunderstandings and dramas, fallings out and comings together, and some friendships forged that I hope will never end.

My world opened up in wonderful ways, and remains open.  I still love Twitter, but I’m myself now, a writer reading other writers, enjoying the postings of artists, a few celebrities, and plenty of quirky individualists.

So today, I say goodbye, mindfully, and acknowledge that it was, indeed, a Golden Time, but it’s over.  It was one of the diamonds that stands out among the stones. 

~~~~~

Giving Thanks

While I was away at college, my stepmother threw away everything I owned, except what I had in my dorm room.  It’s too easy to say it was a wicked thing for a stepmother to do…she was a person who was in a lot of pain, and I’ve told myself many times since that day that if those things were important, I should have taken better care to have them with me.

But “those things” were signed yearbooks, school essays, childhood journals, letters from friends, birthday cards, scrawled poetry, my earliest writings…and it actually gives me a soft ache in my chest just thinking about them.  Perhaps if I still had them, they wouldn’t seem so precious, but I doubt it.

A strange topic for Thanksgiving, but I’ll get to the point. 

I think that losses bring home the importance of things, in a visceral way, a way that sticks.  The thought of losing something is nothing like actually losing it.

So, when a box arrived on my doorstep fairly recently from my stepfather, I took notice.  It was the sum total of my 90-year-old mother’s family history.  Photographs, scrapbooks, notes in fading sepia ink…but the great treasure was two journals, one from each of my grandmothers -- Ethel’s from Evanston, Illinois in 1901, and Bula’s from Fort Dodge, Kansas in 1904.

Grandma Ethel’s is truly disappearing before my eyes, with small pieces of cracked and powdered red leather littering my desk each time I open it to transcribe, but I’m saving it, page by page, on my computer.  Grandma Bula’s holds up better -- I’m saving it, too, by typing the words into a document that goes on the external hard drive for safekeeping.

Ethel and Bula couldn’t possibly have conceived how much their words would mean to a granddaughter who was 9 and 17, respectively, when they died.  Computers and hard drives would be a mystery to the young girls who rode out to “socials” in a horse and buggy, and wondered whether to wear the blue frock with the satin ribbons, or the white shirtwaist with the red stitching.

But those girls had hard lives…expected to begin earning their way at fourteen, be married a few years later, manage a house, raise children, care for their husbands, and somehow keep their dreams alive.  I can read it in every page, and I’m so grateful for their point of view.

They’ve given me back my history.  And to the ache in my chest about my lost writings? They would say, “Feel it.  Move on.  Write some more.”

~~~~~