contemplating Frost again
Except for parking on StAndrews Marina instead of conveniently underground and next to the elevator in the HV garage, and except for the quarter to four-tenths mile walk each way depending on how far out I have to park and which route I choose to walk - - and I've actually grown to rather appreciate the walk, knowing it's good for me - - we are pretty much back to battery here.
And although it interferes with the view, I even like the scaffolding, partly because with a lifelong uneasiness with heights it puts a little more solid matter between me and empty space, partly because it lends a probably false sense of security in the event October or November brings another hurricane our way, but mostly because I enjoy the rectangles and triangles and trapezoids and parallelograms and other reminders of high school geometry.
Without going into where my choices made and roads not taken have brought me, and often left me looking around and back surprised, from time to time I've wondered what my life would have been like as a high school math teacher, or a college professor of some subject such as languages, or an astronomer pondering the universe, or a lawyer, or the new car dealer I contemplated early on, or a naval officer with a different specialty. Or even gone to seminary direct from UFlorida instead of procrastinating a quarter century.
Probably nearly everyone has such thoughts. But I do know that I would not do anything that changed the children I have and love, where not only roads not taken but split seconds can make that difference. And I'd not choose any road not taken that would put me anywhere this morning but here in 7H looking out at my Bay that I love more than all other bays, and I've seen a lot of bays. So, looking back and thinking "I should have ..." or "I wish I'd ..." is foolishness isn't it. But the thoughts still occur, just as with Frost again -
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
RSF&PTL
T+