I was a “good” daughter. Although there is no one left to tell you otherwise. I was a “good” wife, but again, life has dealt me a certain hand and my deceased husband can’t contradict that statement either. I do know that I played my roles well, at least by the standards of the day. As a good friend likes to say, I stayed in my lane. I rarely took risks. I made it a point to stay out of the lime light. I’m starting to realize, I wasn’t afraid of failure, I was afraid of success.
It is easy to stay in your lane, until there’s a fork in the road and neither direction has a street sign. Thirty-six years ago, I was preparing to graduate from college with a degree in Public Relations. I didn’t want a job in PR, but I had no idea what I did want. Therapy wasn’t something we “did” back then, so I didn’t realize I was grappling with depression and anxiety. My coping mechanism was to literally stay in bed. In the end, I was six credits short of graduating at the end of 4 years. Where was my map? Instead of knowing what I wanted to do, I moved to where I wanted to live, Washington D.C.
Another detour.
Two years later, I married my husband and went on to have three beautiful children. I was back in my lane. I was a wife and a mother. That was my job, my identity. I was safe. In our decades of marriage, I had used the fact that I didn’t have my degree as an excuse to stay “in my lane”. That didn’t stop me from enrolling in a class here and there. I finally realized I was smart. Then my husband, never prone to grand gestures, gave me the best and most terrifying gift. To this day, I don’t know how he managed it, but he secretly gathered transcripts from all the colleges where I’d dabbled, and sent them to the registrar’s office at Purdue. In 2004, nineteen years after I left the campus, I opened the mailbox and found a large stiff envelope. My diploma. Little did I know, that one loving act, would lead to a second degree 5 years later. I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in nursing. But now what?
Another detour.
My husband had taken a job in Chicago. That required that he commute from Cleveland and was only home on the weekends. Finances were tight. We sold our large house in the suburbs and rented a smaller house in Shaker Heights, an urban community on the edges of downtown Cleveland. For the first time in twenty years, I was living the life of a single mom. My two oldest children had left the nest. It was just me, my 12-year-old son, and a nursing degree. A career sounded terrifying. Volunteering was a safe alternative. I began volunteering at the Free Medical Clinic of Cleveland. I fell in love with my life. Ironically, I spent so much time at the Free Clinic, they applied for a grant that would have paid my salary. They offered me a job. I was saved from a career, by my role as a wife. My husband got a permeant job in Chicago. We were moving.
Another detour.
What brought on this trip down memory lane? I’m once again at that fork in the road. My late in life career as a nurse has been spent in the community, not in the hospital. I am no longer proficient at the skills I learned in nursing school. Becoming a widow kickstarted my habit of taking classes. In addition to my nursing license, I am a certified Spiritual Director, a Peace Circle Keeper, and an Advanced Care Planning Facilitator etc. I have completed numerous, soul stitching, seminars on racism and non-violence. But now what? I’ve revised my resume a million times. But that voice in my head keeps whispering loudly, “what is a “woke” 59-year-old widow, with a filing cabinet full of certifications really capable of doing?” I wish I knew…
This morning a friend posted a reflection on his mission trip to El Salvador. That scary voice in my heart started to whisper, you are braver than you think and stronger than you know. Why would something as simple as a Facebook post spark this thunderous whisper. It nudged me to acknowledge. To remember…
Another detour.
In 2010, with a newly printed nursing license, I decided to join a group on a medical mission to El Salvador. Let me be clear, I had never, ever, ever traveled without my parents or my husband, let alone travel to a third world country. It’s no small matter that I am an introvert at heart and I knew absolutely no one on the trip. I also don’t speak a lick of Spanish. But I pushed through my fear. Who was this woman who had a four-day course of Typhoid pills next to the catchup in her refrigerator? I had no idea, but she felt like…me.
This morning I stood on a wobbly ladder, pushing through the vertigo and carefully grabbed the plastic bins that held my mementoes. It wasn’t until I opened the third and final box that I found the memory book I made after returning from El Salvador. Before I had the courage to write this blog, I made a memory book.
Anyone out there hiring a scared but fearless, woke 59 year old widow, who is willing to detour out of her lane?
