Meandering

“See what you’ve been through. Look at what you survived.” unlnown

Meandering

Meandering backwards, retracing my steps along a path now rutted and overgrown with memories, I pause to reflect on the crossroads, the turning points and the u-turns made over a span of 86 years. It’s a large canvas covered with victories, defeats, happiness, sadness, guilt and reassurance colored in shades of the rainbow and dotted with uphill climbs and downhill depressions. As I ponder this irregular path called my life, I wonder at the mystery of it all. Life at those decision points have been tempered by other life experiences but the impossible question of “why” remains. Why a right turn instead of a left?

I decided to undertake this late life exploration because I am innately curious and because I love to ask “what if” of any situation especially if it’s further in the past. For example, what if I had not made the decision to leave home for an east coast college where I met and married my first husband? Would I have just settled into the Michigan life that was familiar and predictable?

In memory, I can place myself standing under the towering hardwoods at the University of Delaware oval, pausing to push back the tears of homesickness, telling myself this move is not much different from the farm move my father orchestrated when I was thirteen. I did it then; I could do it now. Standing transfixed on my empowering university setting, I knew I would not be returning to the safety of home and family. Standing at this crossroad, I felt the urgency that a person must have if she is to move forward confidently. Hungry for new experiences, I found them in a landscape and attitude much different from my midwestern roots. I was ready intellectually for the challenge of new ideas testing my existing values, and I found them in my study of literature and the mentors who were just right for a hungry mind.

Subsequently, these moves formed a framework for creating community in the many locations I traveled with my husband and four children, moving from the central coast to new England to the deep south, the southwest, Washington D. C. and finally to Colorado. From each location I was challenged to find my place, my support team and to learn it all quickly so even if our stay was short, I could build a community for my growing family. The downside has been a disconnect from any specific place. For some time, I have wrestled with this feeling of displacement. What has replaced that sense of non-attachment? I’m not sure, but along the way, in each place, I was fed by the people I embraced in my community.

I will continue to examine the whys of my journey and play the “what if” game as I move in reflection along my path, rediscovering the person who traveled this bumpy route

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