I guess I haven't.
I guess I haven’t
"Are you worried?"
"I wonder about things. How my life might turn out."
"Your life’ll turn out the way it wants."
"Have you done everything you thought you might like to do?"
"I guess I haven’t."
In the bunkhouse, an end of workday, lights out chat between John, a forty year old cowboy, and his work companion, a sixteen year old boy contemplating his life. Almost twice John’s age, nearly five times the age of Mark who wrote the narrative*, but remembering my life at both ages, I am hearing the conversation.
Have I done everything I thought I might like to do?
I guess I haven’t.
At sixteen, and again at forty, there were cars I wanted, both cars were later parked in my dream garage out back. From time to time I’d peer in the window and think about how I loved them and might have enjoyed owning them.
Driving them, having them for my very own. It wasn’t for lack of time, there was time, plenty of time, always time. Nor lack of resources, I could have done it. It was choices, choosing, the choices I made or that were made for me. This car or that car, and even if you're driving the car you want, this road or that road, maybe like Frost’s "The Road Not Taken", to wax poeticalistic (when a man is 78 he can DW choose his own words, coin them if he wishes). In some ways it has been as though my life had a will of its own, to turn out the way it wanted independent of me.
Driving them, having them for my very own. It wasn’t for lack of time, there was time, plenty of time, always time. Nor lack of resources, I could have done it. It was choices, choosing, the choices I made or that were made for me. This car or that car, and even if you're driving the car you want, this road or that road, maybe like Frost’s "The Road Not Taken", to wax poeticalistic (when a man is 78 he can DW choose his own words, coin them if he wishes). In some ways it has been as though my life had a will of its own, to turn out the way it wanted independent of me.
Can lives do that? Can life do that? Does life have control, or do we? At one point in midlife, facing a wrenching choice, when I was inclined toward one over the other, my father said, “Bubba, it may be your destiny.” I guess it was. We moved to Apalachicola, Ef-El-A instead of to Mount Joy, Pee-A. Did life, destiny, fate have that sort of control over me? How about the cars? To one who doesn’t love cars it would seem trivial, but I’m safe here and now, what if I had bought that car, those other cars? Would there have been wrecks driving that car that didn't happen with the car I chose instead? Why didn’t I choose the other cars, was that also part of my destiny, do I believe that? From 1977 for a few years, as a combination hobby and avocation my last year in the Navy and the first year or two after retirement, I had a car brokership, selling and leasing new cars. The story has been told in this blog at least once, of the woman who ordered a car from me, a red Chevrolet. A day or so later she called me and cancelled the order, said she’d been praying about it and God did not want her to have a red car. Was that God, or her? Or was it destiny? Or fate? Did fate or destiny or God save her in that choice and change of heart? IDK.
I’m thinking of the 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk that so captured Roger Ebert’s heart when he was a teen age boy. In the later years of his life, by chance, looking, he found the car again and bought it, finally owned it, loved it and drove it as a teen boy would drive and love a car. Roger seized life, took life over from itself, had the victory over fate, trampled destiny. Toward the end of the story, though, it didn’t turn out the way Roger would have wanted, so I guess life took charge again after all.
Wednesday afternoon we attended a funeral at First Presbyterian Church. Gretchen was in my Bay High School class of 1953. I didn’t know her until high school, because she went to Panama Grammer not to Cove School. But she taught at Cove School later, second grade we were told. Thinking how Gretchen as a teacher would have blessed the lives of her students, I wondered, as the pastor spoke, if her sons would like to have a little memory plaque by the door to her Cove School classroom. As a member of the Foundation that owns the school property, I would approve that for Gretchen. Gretchen had the voice of an angel, I know because she sang solo at several weddings I officiated at First Presbyterian and she also sang at HNES Wednesday chapel a few times during my years as school chaplain. I think she sang in the choir the years my beloved friend Norman was music minister at First Presbyterian, it was Wallace Memorial Church at the time. Gretchen’s father and my father were in the same graduating class at Bay High, not sure but I’m thinking Class of 1931. He owned the Chevrolet and Buick dealership here, and my father bought cars and trucks from him.
As the pastor spoke during her funeral I remembered the conversation between Mark and John. Not the evangelists, the cowboys. I hope Gretchen did everything she thought she might like to do, and that life wasn’t always in control. Sometimes we have the victory, sometimes life wins.
"Are you worried?"
"I wonder about things. How my life might turn out."
"Your life’ll turn out the way it wants."
"Have you done everything you thought you might like to do?"
"I guess I haven’t."
ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω**
Verb, present, imperative, active, 3rd person singular, νοείτω reminds me that only last week, Anu Garg gave us "noesis" perceive, understand
TW+
* Spragg, Mark, Where Rivers Change Direction , Riverhead Books, NY, 2000, page 176
** Mark 13:14, "Let the reader understand"