A RIVER OF UNCERTAINTY

My son is a wise-acre. “Mom, don’t be nervous. I’m sure the other kids will like you.” Dan knew I was a little nervous. He remembered how he felt when I dropped him off at college for the first time. And after all, this was the first time in over 30 years that I was going back to live in the dorm. The first time for a very long time that I moved to a place I knew not a single soul.

Living in a National Park has been an item on my Bucket List forever. The trick to this particular item is that to live in a National Park, you have to work in a National Park. Working in a National Park means being employed by either the federal government (Park Service) or a concessionaire that provides hospitality and retail services for the Park.

‘Living’ in a National Park is really more like going to camp.  You might share a dorm room with someone you’ve never met. You eat dormitory food – high carb with lots of pasta and questionable meat with even more questionable sauce.  At least in my EDR (Employee Dining Room) there are always fresh fruits, vegetables and a salad bar.

I am a creature who enjoys her comforts. I like fresh, recently roasted coffee by a local coffee roaster that I buy when I shop at a Farmer’s Market for organic fruits and vegetables. I buy my cage free white, brown and green eggs at the same Farmer’s Market from a woman whose husband is the Extension Agent for a neighboring county. I like her; I think her chickens probably like her and like laying eggs for her. Occasionally I buy a hot fresh Orange Cranberry scone from Adobe Rose for breakfast. Or at least I did.

I have a nice townhome in a neighborhood full of nice townhomes and patio homes. My neighbors and I enjoy a heated Jacuzzi and swimming pool large enough to actually swim laps. We can play tennis on one of two courts and take the walking trail through the wash to get there. In my townhome, you will find framed art on my walls. Persian and Oriental rugs hug my feet when I cross my wood-floored rooms. The bright desert sun is filtered through the e-glass of the sliding glass door through which I can see the wonderfully lush wash directly behind my house and the mountains to the north.  Now I'm living in half of a dorm room and my housemate’s 20-year-old son is living in my bedroom.

So what am I doing here? Here, where I have my cosmetics at least temporarily stored in plastic bags on the floor of my small closet. Here, where I had to ‘borrow’ a microwavable glass from the cafeteria to heat my coffee water in the community microwave so I could drain it through the coffee I brought along to make my morning brew in my one-cup camping coffee-maker? Here, where I have to schlep down the hall to use the toilet or take a shower? I actually have asked myself that question a lot these last few days.

I’ve had a lot of losses in the last year, the kind that demand you reassess your life’s priorities. What I've learned is that Loss, of any kind, is both a taking away and giving to.  My revered mother’s death was certainly a taking away kind of loss but all of our mothers die and we all know this. In the end, Mother’s death was also a giving to. Rather than constantly flying back and forth across the country as I have for the last two years especially, I am now free to pursue other relationships and other opportunities for relationship. Even my siblings and I are free learn to enjoy each other as individuals, not just because Mother would expect that but because family is in the end what each of us yearns for. We call each other Sis and Brother now more than we ever did before Mom’s long illness drew us closer together.

The inertia of our lives is very hard to reverse. Our lives are like those giant cruise ships that take miles and miles of ocean to turn around. It's easier to set a course and then follow it no matter what.  Wouldn’t it be helpful if cruise ships could just stop, sort of pick themselves up and turn in another direction? I suspect my rather extreme move, from my comfortable foothills home to a Spartan dorm, is my way of stopping – that thing most of us think about at least once or twice in our lives but rarely do. Stopping what we are doing that for some reason is no longer the best fit. Stopping a life that if it were clothing would need alteration at the very least or, if unalterable, given to Goodwill.  

This kind of Stopping – being miles away from my family, my ‘village’, my home and my work, strikes at the heart of one of the aspects of my character that my recent losses allowed me to see needs work – my need to be in control.  I couldn’t stop Mother from dying no matter how often I visited; I simply can’t guilt my son to come back to his home town to live; I can’t solve my dear friends’ financial or family troubles. I can’t control what is happening in Asia or even what is happening in my hometown. OK, here it is.  I am officially giving up control. 

A good Stopping, I am discovering, means allowing yourself to be swept down a river of uncertainty. Ironically, I am discovering there is nothing like living with uncertainty to provide that sense that everything will be alright no matter what. I’m learning that for me, controlling is not the answer; learning how to flow is the answer. I am finding that sometimes Stopping, although it might feel like abandoning ship, is an efficient way to sort out what we really need for the rest of our lives.  Maybe it turns out to be more of the same. Maybe it turns out to be something completely different. Actually, there really is no point to a Bucket List, I think, unless you use it to examine how your dreams actually fit with your personal reality. I am finding I agree with Victor Frankl, “When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”  In the end, maybe I am the life raft.