The Rest of the Story

What is the reason to venture out, to leave the familiar for awhile… or longer? It's been described as the “travel bug”, a “virus of restlessness”, but it is neither an insect nor a disease. Why does the “bear go over the mountain”? Perhaps the word “Wanderlust” comes closest, a passion to see what we can see...

Recent interviews with John Steinbeck’s only surviving son, Thomas, suggest that his Nobel Prize winning father took his trip, memorialized within his book “Travels with Charlie”, because he was dying and that he passionately wanted to take one more look, savor one more delicious and drawn out taste of a country and a people that he loved.

William “Least Heat” Moon’s impetus for travel was also rooted in passion, in his case the pain of lost love, lost dreams. As he described in his best seller “Blue Highways”, the stars of change aligned above in a two punch combination, losing both his marriage and his position as an English professor. His writing reflects the dark night of his soul. Was he running into America or away from his pain. In truth, he carried his pain with him and drained his poison, slowly venting it out across the Blue Highways.

Passion certainly brought us to the road. Connie and I are among the baby boomer generation, old enough to remember Jack Kerouac and young enough to not qualify for Social Security… “Tweeners”… between middle age and old age, a place of reflection and revelation. How many of we Boomers are coming to this point of realization, that life is finite, that there is so much more to the experience than the collection and maintenance of material things.

Everyone has a story. As the reader, you have the questionable privilege to hear ours.” The rest of the story”, as Paul Harvey used to say, would be lacking without it.

We were married in 1976. Like Moon, I had run away from my roots as a 13^th generation Mainer to heal a broken heart. Six months working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week in a pipeline camp in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska pretty much burned that hurt from my heart. But I was not aware that my heart was yet opened for business until upon returning to Maine for a brief family obligation, I stumbled onto Connie. It was the most fortunate blunder of my life.

She was the beautiful, oldest daughter of 7 children from a staunch Catholic, French Canadian- first generation, Irish American family in central Maine and, with her love, she effortlessly convinced me not to return to Alaska. As I said, passion led us to the road…

My career had been in the field of environmental engineering and that specialty led me into the paper industry where I climbed the corporate ladder as we raised our family. Identical twin boys followed by a daughter 5 years later filled the bedrooms of our large home and kept us very busy with the joyful business of life. But along the way, things got complicated, my job grew exponentially more demanding, the lure of material things, the trap of “more”. Life became frenetic, unobserved, lost in activity; the American Story?

By 1999, I had been prepared to run the company and, in order to educate my children and provide my family with the standard of life that “society” demanded, I would have accepted the position though I detested the work.

On December 8^th, the call from the Department of State informing me of the death of our son Eric, who had been studying abroad for a semester in Australia, put an end to life as we knew it and thought it would ever be. Our journey through grief, like so many others who have stood in the fire, changed us. It changed what we felt was important, how we saw the world, how we lived our lives. It was not a peaceful, gentle process. It was an excruciating amputation of hopes and dreams without anesthetic.

I quit my job and spent the next year focusing on my family. We sought and discovered invaluable resources; books, compassionate friends we didn’t know we had, the infinite love of family, wise psychologists and physician, nurses, hospice workers, and grief counselors. When life resumed it was so different. We were so different.

Over the next seven years we planned and hoped for the window to open. And Life threw the kitchen sink at us. I am drawing a curtain over much of the detail of this period of our lives. It is not because I have blocked out those memories. At times I pray that I could. Relating the painful, traumatic details might titillate the sensationalist, Jerry Springer junkies among us. It might even sell books. But not this book.

I will tell you that if you ever thought there was a bottom to that deep well of darkness and despair, think again. There is not. No bounce. Only choice.

When the kids were out of college and employed, when the jobs wound down, when the tumor was cut out and tested benign, when the plates and screws were removed for our son and the leg was saved, when we had buried my parents and Connie's dad, when the house closed and we sold our “stuff”, the window opened. And we took a leap of faith.

For the first time in our adult lives, we were debt free, untethered from material things (except for some boxes in a storage unit) and without a long term plan. Wild, exhilarating, terrifying freedom.

What do “Boomers” do with our lives when we finally have the reigns in our hands? Do we move to a 55 Plus community in Florida and learn to play golf. Do we throw ourselves into community involvement and volunteering? Do we become totally involved in the lives of children and grandchildren? Yes. We do all of those things.

But for others, dreams have become amplified, super charged, tinged with craziness, outrageous. Freedom mainlined directly into the vein, hard core addiction and the road to recovery, to “normalcy” takes years.

Fast forward....

We have been driving around America, watching life flow, “hearing the speech… smelling the grass” for the past 13 years. And what a trip it has been.

We are no longer "tweeners", now full fledged, social security, medicare, retirement savings, senior citizens. We have watched the body and the mind slow down, malfunction, misfire and, so far, have been rescued by medical science.

We are very glad we took the opportunity to explore this beautiful country while we had the stamina and fitness to do it with gusto. I'm not throwing the towel in yet. Still more adventures we want to have, more travel and things to see, but right now we want to be close to family and grandkids. A familiar tune for Boomers.

Are we extraordinary? Not especially. But we are extraordinarily fortunate...blessed... to have been born at this time, in this place, to this family.

How to express gratitude? Give as much as you can give. Not just material stuff, although the judicious application of cash has its place, but especially love, attention, compassion, understanding, support, babysitting, home maintenance, advice...

So here is my advice for what it's worth. At this stage of life:

Surrender the ball. Let the younger ones take over, make their mistakes and earn their experience. Relax, Calm down. Be quiet and pay attention. There is more to see and learn and experience, but you're not going to find it on TV. Turn off the news and politics. It is so toxic and fake.

Body awareness. Realize your new reality. Hold onto the railing and each other. Eat plants, less meat, dairy, eggs, junk food. Control your vices whatever they may be. Lose weight. Moderate exercise like yoga. Stay active. Walk. Take naps. Easy does it. Enjoy your joy.

Understand that no one knows the answers to to the big questions and anyone who says they do is trying to control you. That goes for religion, too. Get comfortable telling yourself "I don't know" and leave it at that.

I don't know why I am writing this stuff. Kinda preachy. Maybe I'm just writing to myself, maybe Connie, maybe some future family reader. It doesn't matter. Enjoying the act of writing does matter.

Carpe Diem.