Choices...

Sunday afternoon was hot and muggy.  The air quality was poor, so we stayed indoors.  Not much to do but look around on the internet.  And I found some interesting things.

I found my best friend from childhood.  She went away to a private high school and then on to college but, up until the summer after the eighth grade, we were inseparable.  When she was home from high school in the summer, we would hang out and go waterskiing frequently.

By the time she got married, and had her wedding in our local church, I was already married and had two children.  After the wedding, I didn’t see her again for almost five years.  She came to visit, spent the night, and we talked as if we had never been apart.  She was in the process of getting a divorce and wanted to know what I had done to make my marriage work.

I had no clue….really.  But we had a wonderful visit and promised to keep in touch.  I didn’t see her again for almost 25 years.  I was invited to attend her parents’ 50^th wedding anniversary celebration.  It was bittersweet.  Our lives had changed so drastically.  We were both in a second marriage, and both had children.

She had gone to divinity school and become an Episcopal priest.  I went back to school and became a registered nurse.  She lived in San Francisco.  I was still in Podunk.  The bonds of the past were broken….  Yet, we exchanged addresses and phone numbers and promised each other we would keep in touch.

It didn’t  happen.   Not her fault, or mine, really.  We live in different worlds, that’s all.

So, yesterday, when I found her written up on Wikipedia, I wasn’t really surprised.  She has gone on to become an Episcopal Bishop: only the 12^th female Episcopal Bishop in the United States.  Moreover, she is the first Latina bishop in the Episcopal Church. 

As I said, it wasn’t surprising at all.  I always knew she would do big things.  She had the intelligence (she majored in calculus in college, for Pete’s sake), the drive, and the spirituality/calling necessary to get where she is.  I am so happy for her, and proud that she is my friend.

I looked up another friend: Yale Law, class of ’74.  And another: professor emeritus at UC Santa Barbara.  Oh my, what happened to me?

Is that the little green monster speaking?  Perhaps.  And, although I am thrilled for them, I have to compare them to me.  What happened?  I never left Podunk!!

And there’s the rub.  Choices.  I sabotaged my own future, in a way, by getting married and having children when I was still a teenager myself.  Ah, poor me?  No.  My choices.  My doing.  And I have to remember that.  Always.

Another very close friend of mine, from kindergarten through junior college, is a PharmD.  She went to pharmacy school in Stockton, right after junior college.  I remember one day, at the end of summer, she came to visit me at my apartment.

We had a wonderful time catching up on what each of us was doing.  Again, it was as if we had never been apart.  As she got ready to leave, she asked me if I would like to go with her to shop for clothes for school.  Looking down at my bare feet, I had to tell her “no.”   She was footloose and fancy free; I had a baby asleep in the other room.

Choices….

I worked several years ago with an LVN who became a good friend.  She lamented that I made “so much more money” than she did, yet she worked just as hard as I did.  At first, I didn’t know what to say.  And then I just said “it’s choices, Rena.  I chose to become an RN.  You chose to become an LVN.”   She told me that the RN program was “too hard” with children at home.   Not true, but it’s the choice she made.

So, I’m not an Episcopal Bishop, or a lawyer, or a Professor Emeritus in the UC system.  I’m just me.  I am the product of the choices that I have made.  I am not “published” nor do I have a body of work that is summarized on Wikipedia.  I never won a lawsuit or approached the bench.

My claim to fame, such as it is, is being the best possible me.  No excuses, no regrets, no jealousy even.  I wish my friends all the success in the world. 

And I have achieved mine….

Cali