I have had a few hurdles in my life, some rough patches and some rather unfortunate incidents. That’s life. You take the good with the bad and try the best you can to make it through. I did, and made it through, not unscarred mind you and surely not “no worse for wear”, but in the end, I’m still alive and that is after all something. I’ve been “mostly dead” more than my fair share of times. Somewhere in my history I must have been given a cat’s lives. Though I think I may have burned through more than the average cat as well.
Today I was pondering as I looked out from my small and rather private perch in the woods, about how far I’ve come and how it was exactly that I ended up where I did. I didn’t envision this as a kid; I didn’t think I’d be here. I figured I’d be a doctor somewhere, practicing medicine in a hospital. I didn’t plan on marriage, ever. I was actually dead set against it, even as a kid. My first grade boyfriend filled my lunchbox with cherry blossoms and proposed with a kiss. I hit him with said lunchbox. Marriage was not in the cards for me, or so I thought. Flash forward to a decade and some years later and there I was getting married, by choice, for no other reason than I wanted to. Mind you I told my husband and companion of the last twenty years of my life there was simply no way I would ever be married, so he shouldn’t ask me. We could live happily together for as long as we wished and there would be no “legal” sort of attachments to deal with. We had long discussions about it numerous times, and each time I explained that marriage was a wonderful institution; I just wouldn’t like to be institutionalized. One day he decided that we should be wed, why I still really don’t know, and he asked me. Shocked, stunned and rather confused I just kind of stared at him. Somehow, someway I heard “yes” coming out of my mouth, but to this very day I cannot for the life of me recall for one second ever thinking “that sounds like a bad idea”.
We were young, and dumb, and poor. We had primarily milk crate furniture, and movie theater cups as glassware. Our bedroom was a walk in closet with twin mattresses piled one atop each other, the closet exactly one inch bigger on every side bigger than those mattresses. We had an old car with over 200,000 miles on it, and we lived on ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese. We were happier than most people ever have the right to be.
Despite everyone who swore it couldn’t work, wouldn’t work, or would last about as long as the cycle of a moon, here we are. Older, somewhat wiser, and doing alright for ourselves. I look around our home, and wonder how it is we’re no longer living with milk crate furniture, eating ramen noodles, and living day to day, let alone week to week. How did we get here?
It hasn’t been easy; we’ve had some rough road in our travels, but who doesn’t? Twenty years later I look at the same man, who was a boy in what seems like just yesterday and can’t for the life of me figure out where the time has gone. I look into his eyes and I see the same look in his eyes now as I did then, the same stubborn, youthful, grab life by the horns, determined look I saw two decades ago.
Life had other plans for me than I expected. I did not end up a doctor as I had planned. Despite my best efforts and planning, it seems that no matter what hurdle came I continued on that path so life had to make things a bit more clear to me by running me over with a truck to drive the point home. Granted I’ve never been quick to give up on an idea, but the truck may have been a bit much. It led me towards a different goal, a different aspect of life. For the better? I’m not sure really. I can’t say yes, and I can’t say no, but different none the less. Whichever in the greater scheme of it all it matters little. It all brought me here, to this place. To the moment I sat earlier, to this house, to my private perch where I relax and view the world’s artistry in sunrises.
Oddly I never imagined satisfaction with life as part of my future. I never really considered it. The concept of being satisfied or not really had never occurred to me. I can’t however imagine being more satisfied with how things turned out. Sure there are a million things I’d change, a million things I would alter or tweak, but if I were to do that, change what has happened, altered the past and removed the things I wish had never happened, erased those moments entirely from my life, would I be here? Could I without a doubt say that by altering the things in my past that go bump in the night inside my brain, that in the end I would be the person I am today, and have the knowledge, capability and insight I do? Probably not. All of it adds up to making me who I am, and in that, also who I am in the life of my husband. The same things I would erase could alter what “we” have become, and I wouldn’t change that for anything.
It was nearly a year ago I sat at our dining room table with my father. He asked if I was satisfied. Not happy, but satisfied. I told him I was, and that I don’t think I would be if I had not seen what I had, been where I had in the moments of life I wished I had not lived while I was living them. He nodded and smiled. He too understood the concept of coming to where you are not in spite of your past but rather taking whatever comes and creating something purposeful, meaningful and better from it. I lost him due to a doctor’s error this past Christmas. I was going to see him the next week. I often wish that I could talk to him, seek his expertise, his knowledge, but it is not to be. His passing changed a lot of things for me, and changed a lot of things in me. I always thought he would be there, like the sunrises in the morning, bright and steady. His loss is perhaps one thing I would change, although I have a feeling that it too is one of those large impact bad things that would forever alter the thread of my personal reality.
I don’t know if I can say something greater, or purposeful or even meaningful came from his passing. I also have a tough time being objective about it. It’s hard to see your heroes die.
In a few hours the sun will rise, bright and steady and as always I will bear witness to it as it stretches over the land, warming the life below it. As it does, I will as always ponder life and events, and with some regret know that I cannot change the past, despite my wishing at times it were so. As I look down into the innocent eyes of my dog, sitting with me as she does every day I will be thankful for the life I have, and be satisfied as well as happy, and know that I have had the experiences, good or bad that have brought me to the place I am. That singular thing is something I never knew I wanted to attain as a kid, but was perhaps a greater purpose than I had set for myself after all.
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