My fellow students have aged well (at least the ones that showed up) and they’ve been successful. They are interesting and funny, have travelled the world, and raised (mostly) well-adjusted kids. Many classmates are doctors or lawyers, others are artists or performers. One worked in the Twin Towers during 911 and survived, another swam the English Channel. I was informed multiple times that my smiling persona hasn’t changed at all, although my silver hair was a surprise. It was startling to find that 24 of our classmates died, from trauma and illness, out of a class of 450. I learned that my town may be a cancer cluster that has been linked, as have many Long Island regions, to illogical carcinomas. On my little street there have been many people who had cancer in their teens and twenties. It gave me pause to drink the water.
My choice to stop working and eventually shift into patient advocacy resonated with everyone I talked with – as baby boomers, we are all struggling with healthcare, parents in denial, hoarding, downsizing, retirement planning. I was hugged and applauded for choosing a new direction and walking away from my last job. I may not have to do much marketing to find future clients.
I was able to go inside my childhood house. The man who bought it from my parents 30 years ago still lives there; little has changed. The den has brown wooden paneling, the ceilings are cottage cheese, my father’s repair jobs are holding up. The ruler in my bedroom closet was painted so I couldn’t check my height chart, but the fixtures are the ones chosen by my mother. I realized that the street location, floor plan and style was eerily similar to the California home where my parents lived for the next 3 decades; they recreated their bubble 3000 miles away.
I am so fortunate that I am healthy and that my father is still around, and that we have built a trusting relationship. It must have been torture for him to leave his homes – both of them – to relinquish control to an uncertain future. My mother’s death was one year ago. While Sid has ups and downs, he has made the best of his new chapter. We’re having a 92nd birthday party on September 3 at his favorite deli in San Diego, where he will be surrounded by friends who enjoy themselves and take life one day at a time (it helps that he’s paying the bill).
When I was a teenager, I used to dream that giant castles sprung up next to our house, where I could hop the fence to explore new adventures. Now I understand that a dead end is not always a blockage, it can also be a pathway.
