As I recall Robert Frost wrote something like this, "Two roads converged in the yellow woods and I took the one less traveled and it made all the difference." I think that is pretty close. But if you stop and think about his poem, it pretty well mirrors our lives, at least mine.
When I left high school for the real world, I was dating a boy named Gene. He joined the Army and I pledged to wait for him. Of course I did not. He sent me a silk pillow from Germany, but by the time it arrived, I was married to my first husband. After 10 years I returned to Hutchinson and several years later I was given the opportunity to host a television segment in eastern Kansas. Not wanting to uproot myself and my little family I opted out of that move. So all these years later here I set in Pueblo, Colorado. I am not sure how it happened, but 40 odd years slipped away from me and left me here an old woman with kids that live some where else and a 2400 square foot home on an acre of ground to amuse myself with by trying to keep the weeds from taking the place.
I do sometimes think back to the road I did not take and wonder where I would be had I married Gene when he came home. Would we have lived happily ever after? I rather doubt it. I did not really know much about him except that he lived in the south part of town with his mother and sister. I close my eyes and try to picture him and I come up blank. I think he had brown eyes and I know he had a buzz cut because he was in the Army. I always wanted to marry a sailor so I do not know how I ended up with a soldier. Guess he was the one who asked me! Duane Seeger came into my life as a friend of my brother Jake's. And three weeks after I was introduced to him, we were in front of the minister at the Presbyterian church down on Sherman Street. But then I did not end up with him, did I? No, my last husband was Marine.
I do like my life because I do not have a lot of roads to choose to take. I am here. I am settled and I am too old to want a lot of changes. Occasionally I think of uprooting and moving back to Hutchinson, or Nickerson, but having to do the actual selling and uprooting is just more than I am able to fathom.
I like to think I have aged gracefully, but I am not sure that is exactly how it happened! What I think is that I married Kenny and he gave me my first real home. So, I took root. When I lost him 20 years later, I still had kids at home. That gave me a reason to stay put. I began doing charity work and then the kids grew up and soon the last one was in love and moving out and here I set. I do look back at the roads that brought me to this little acre out here on the Mesa and wonder if I could go back, would I do anything different?
I think not. I think I may actually be turning into a recluse. I am invited out to eat, because that is the one thing we all do for sure, but I rarely go. It is just easier to get up in the morning and slip into something comfy and try to figure out what I should do today. One day turns into another and before I know it, I am off to church again, and then it starts the whole thing again. Sometimes the tedium is broken by the need to buy goose food, or replenish my own supply of whatever it is I am eating this week.
For several years I volunteered at hospice and I think about returning to that venue, but I do not drive at night and people tend to want to die at night, so that is pretty well out the door. I do have a grandbaby a couple days out of the month which definitely breaks the monotony of my solitary existence. And sometimes I go to lunch with a lady friend. Even went shopping one time with Kay. But other than that, the sun comes up, I sleep through Jeopardy!, the sun goes down and then I go to bed.
So when it comes to taking another road, that is pretty much a moot point! I am doing very well staying on the path I am on at this time! So, Mr. Robert Frost, I wonder what you decided? If you had it to do all over again, would you? Would I? Would anyone?
I recall a conversation with my mother once and it went like this:
"Why does she put up with his bullshit? Why doesn't she just leave?" And mother, in her infinite wisdom said this.... "It is like setting in a pile of warm shit. As long as you are in it, you are warm, but if you try to move out of it you find it is cold and smelly as you move away. So it is just easier to set there and not move."
So, I think whatever road I took, it still would have brought me here! Been a lot of twists and turns, and bumps and tumbles, but I am here, I am warm, and I am not leaving!
