Year of transition

April 5, 2009


We just spent a weekend at our home away from home – Chautauqua Lake. The one thing that really impressed itself on me during the visit was what a year of change this will be.

There will be three weddings this summer, including our beautiful daughter Jill and her fiancé Colin, and the two children of our good friends, the Andersons. The world seems to be spinning by at an incredible speed with change being the only constant.

Add to the weddings the fact that Jill will be graduating from grad school, James will be a senior in college, Rachel will be headed to Abu Dhabi on another excursion in her global trek and I will be attending grad school in a fresh environment. My wife Judy continues to shoulder incredible burdens at home and at work and does so willingly. On a bigger scale, the country will need to emerge from its economic funk if we are to survive as the United States of America. This calendar year must see an upturn in our economic fortunes.

It will quite the year – 2009.

I was flattered to hear from friends that I am a fabulous role model for my children and those young people I will be attending school with this year. I never think of it that way. Sometimes I think I am a complete kook, having given up a good-paying, stable job to leap into an uncertain future in a new career at age 52.

Our neighbor and confidante, Barb, says I represent what is good about the Baby Boom generation – the generation that at one time seemed to embrace the alternative, the non-material approach to life before it immersed itself in greed and thievery. I shared with her that I have stolen the phrase of author Wayne Dyer as my motto for the next 15 years: How may I serve.

If I end up teaching at a Catholic high school, that will be an honor. If I end up teaching lower socio-economic students at a community college, that will be fine. If I end up being a househusband, then I will fill that role happily.

All I know is that my soul needed a change, and in this year of change I have decided to go for it. My goal now is to keep myself involved, to write and write some more since that seems to be my calling, to keep focused on my schooling and not to be afraid to walk bravely into the unknown.

I see my 22-year-old daughter going undaunted into the unknown as she enters the last rigorous semester of her schooling, preparing to marry and possibly relocate hundreds of miles from her family. How much more change can one person take in less than a year? Now that to me is being a role model.

If I had a prayer for this coming year is would be – Lord, give me courage to stay on this path and see what good and grace I can bring into the world. Amen.

Note to readers: I woke up this morning on Vukote Road and looked at the bedside clock. Yep, it was 7:52.