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STRAIGHT LINES GET YOU
FROM POINT TO POINT
BUT NOT THROUGH LIFE

Journal of Healing – May 24, 2006

By Mary Koch

My sixty-second birthday got off to a shaky start. It happened to coincide with the deadline for this weekly column, and for the first time in years, there was no column. The problem was not a lack of ideas, but no time to spend at the computer.

I put a slice of bread in the toaster and e-mailed an apology to my editors. The e-mail was dispatched with no problem, but the toaster jammed. Not the pull-the-plug, ease-toast-out-with-a-fork kind of jam. I had to practically dismantle the toaster, ending up with a mountain of bread crumbs.

My husband was waiting in bed for me to get him up, into the shower and dressed. On my way to his bedroom I fetched from the freezer a container of our precious, locally-produced goat’s milk that would eventually go through John’s feeding tube. It slipped from my fingers, crashing to the floor. No use crying over spilt milk – it was frozen. But the container was a goner.

* * *

SOLDIERING onward, I went to John’s room and tore off a page from his daily calendar of New Yorker cartoons. There, in the simplest sketch, was the column I’d been trying to find time to write all week.

The cartoonist showed cars driving down a freeway that splits into separate roads. Overhead was a sign, typical of freeway interchanges, with arrows pointing to each road and the notice, “It’s all good.”

As in Robert Frost’s poem “The road not taken,” we wonder sometimes what life would be like if we’d chosen differently. I agree with the cartoonist that all roads are good, but I have a hard time staying with a single route, sometimes bumping across the median to head off in a new direction.

During a workshop at our church recently, we charted our lives on a piece of paper, starting with a horizontal base line representing each year or decade. We were to draw a second line, going upward for good years and below the base line for bad years. A third line would represent our spiritual life, so we could see how it paralleled – or perhaps didn’t – line No. 2.

It was a worthwhile thing to contemplate. Problem is, just as I could never stick with one road, I’ve never been a straight-line person. My lines tended to loop-the-loop, going upwards, downwards, forwards and backwards.

* * *

SOME PEOPLE say you can’t change the past. Maybe you can’t change the facts of the past, but you can change the truth and the lessons learned depending on your point of view. It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope. Each time you look back, the kaleidoscope has rotated a bit, the colors a shade or two different, the patterns evolving.

Kaleidoscopes are made with mirrors. That kaleidoscope of our past reflects who we are right now. Writer Whitney Otto, in a recent New York Times commentary, paraphrased George Carlin: “At 68, I’m every age I ever was. I always think that I’m not just 68. I’m also 55 and 21 and 3. Oh, especially 3.”

I’ll admit there are times when my kaleidoscope is out of focus, maybe the colors aren’t so attractive or maybe I even forget to look for them.

My birthday evolved into a celebratory day with visitors and gift deliveries, cards and phone calls, and a dozen yellow roses from my husband. At one point, I looked in the mirror. Sure enough, I saw a 62-year-old face, and not one of those lines was straight.

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