Changing Direction
In a life of U-Turns and Swerves
Almost every time I leave my house to go into town, I have to turn around and come back. I forgot the library book. I forgot the grocery list. I forgot the lag bolts to return to Menard’s.
I try to bundle errands because it’s 50 miles round trip to the nearest city. That’s less than a daily commute for most folks, but we’re retired and do our best to limit energy usage. We have a fuel-efficient car and a 5-star-plus Energy Star house, an electric lawnmower and geothermal and solar that provide most of our energy. We do use chainsaws and tractors, but we try to put everything we cut down to use as firewood, mulch, construction material or reinforcements on trails and farm roads. Bundling errands is just a part of that ethos.
In the short run, it means a little extra fuel to turn around and come back. Yet that makes the most of the trip in the long run. It pays off.
That’s not so different from life. A bundle of errands is like the lengthy to-do list of life. It requires planning and having the right vehicle. And it often means circling back on the original route.
Last week, my daughter called from Portland to say her father died in England where he was living and fighting a recent cancer diagnosis. At her college graduation almost a decade ago, I was able to pull him aside and tell him what we should tell all of our once and current loved ones before we never see them again: I love(d) you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, I forgive you and thank you. We both got teary-eyed. It was a doubling back, a chance to retrace some steps then set out on a better route. When I heard he had died, I was sad but at peace. I know he was too, there with his second wife, having made amends with his daughter.
Most lives are full of left and right turns, switchbacks and climbs, swerves and skidding stops. Some of us start out thinking it’s a straight road ahead – school, job, family, retirement, grandkids, death. Not me though. I had no starting line, no finish line and certainly no guardrails.
Maybe my generation was the last to even imagine that kind of life anyway. In the 1990’s, in my 30s with a steady job, a husband and a baby, I started to hear about the “gig economy” where most people younger than I was would have five careers – not five jobs - in their lives.
It was a curve that tightened without warning, like Kodak thinking they’d switch to digital cameras over the next five years. They were out of the camera business in one. Everything happened so much faster than we imagined. My first husband’s chemo collapse, my father’s last breath, my daughter turning 30, smart phones.
Changing directions requires slowing down, unless you want to crash. It’s usually caused by some outside force, like a deer in the road or cancer. It often requires a complete stop, an idling, scanning the new horizon and then a slow revving up to previous speed, this time with the shadows in different places, a new view and a different set of roadblocks.
Unemployed college grad. Community organizer. Married. Union representative. Reunited with mother. Union organizer. Communications director. Mother. Freelance writer. Book author. Divorced. Reunited with father. Nonprofit newspaper publisher. Remarried. Land trust founder. Farmer. Every one of them a change in direction, not to mention location.
I’m an old hand at it now. And I’m exhausted.
Truckers used to have a joke.
“Why does the JB Hunt driver keep driving around the same block?”
“He forgot to shut off his turn signal.” (Why JB Hunt drivers? Because they were well-paid company employees with decent wages and a pension, so of course, everyone else resents them.)
Sometimes we’re as stuck as those proverbial JB Hunt drivers, never changing course because it’s easier to just follow the turn signal. And sometimes our turn signal, heck our steering wheel, doesn’t even work and we just weave down the road careening off of Jersey barriers, smashing into other cars, running red lights and hoping the cops don’t catch us.
That was me. I drag raced with what I thought was love, spun out seeking a belonging I’d never known, leaned on the horn for a reason to live in traffic that told me I didn’t deserve one. Changing direction was a requirement, fender benders were necessary and finally, banged up and barely chugging, I skirted along the forgiving guideposts of my second husband and my grown daughter and started to cruise smoothly over a comforting ribbon of unconditional love.
So far in 2024, I’ve lost four people and a cherished dog. My success is that I had people and dogs. Still do. I’m bent and bruised, but farther down the road than I ever thought I’d get. I have to thank those who took advantage of my naivete when I was young and insulted my passion as I grew older. I thank those who betrayed me and demeaned me as much as those who taught me love and self-respect because every one of them got me to this place, with so much to offer, ready to turn on the lights for the next person who doesn’t know which way to turn.
An interesting take on change.
Thanks again to the Iowa Farmers Union Writers Collective for the initial inspiration for this piece.
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