The Late Arrival

Jump in, honey! I’m right here. Jamie’s voice echoed above the splashes in the indoor public pool where 3 year-old Georgia was taking swimming lessons. Pigtails on either side of her head created alien like bulges through her orange swim cap. She stood at the pool’s edge, stooped over...thinking, weighing the options...and not jumping. Can’t say I blame her. Ground is solid, secure; while water, no matter who’s standing in it waiting to catch you, isn’t. But solid isn’t truly solid if you think about it. Earthquakes happen and whole buildings tumble. Floods sweep villages away; and tornadoes and avalanches even use what’s solid to ground themselves and wreak havoc. Clinging to what’s solid can be a dangerous proposition - in nature and in your career. I imagine my daughter, stooped, overthinking, weighing her options, missing out on the fun she could’ve had, had she just jumped into her daddy’s waiting arms. The scene was my mirror. What I saw was myself clinging onto a ...

It was the day before Mother’s Day and I found myself at the store to pick up a few forgotten items. I didn't bother trying to be presentable and ended up at the store wearing a baseball cap, sweats and sans make-up. Pretty. Anyway, I hurried past the card aisle, anxious to get the stuff I needed and get out. Glancing up the aisle clogged with people searching for last minute Hallmark well wishes, something strange happened. Or didn't happen. For the first time in nearly thirty years since my mom’s been gone, my internal GPS didn't point me to that aisle. The divining rod in my head didn't lead me to search for a card for my mom. There was no back-to-reality jerk. No surprisingly/unsurprisingly painful reminder realization that, no -- there’s no need to buy her a card because she’s not here anymore. This is a good thing, I think, but I can’t tell you how I got to this place. There still isn't a day that passes without me thinking of mom, wondering what...

So what is your life’s purpose? It was a question posed in a moderated discussion thrown out to a small group of three. Up until that point, we had been responding to questions in ways we thought would make us stand out as individuals. Or at least I had been, truthfully. The question clogged my thinking and stopped me in my tracks. A s long as I could remember, I heard the perpetual question from my parents, well-meaning friends of my parents, teachers and guidance counselors: What do you want to be when you grow up? Then when I became an adult (seriously, am I really an adult?), my own voice grated in my mind even when it appeared like I had it altogether: What don’t I want to do? What I wanted to be as an adult had everything to do with career, money. What I didn’t want to do was a bar I’d set for making money in a said career. Neither had anything to do with purpose . But yet, there I was almost clocking in at the half-century mark with more years behind me than ahea...