Reflections on a
Road Not Taken
by
Dick Prosapio © 2007
Now
and then, I find my thoughts wandering back to that fateful day I
chose one path over another and how, as one tick of a second hand
leads to another, that moment gave rise, ultimately, to this one.
It's an entirely fruitless exercise of course,
just as pointless as wondering how much America and the World would
have been different if the election of 2000 had been honest. But
this last little venture I took down this road led me to a bit more
than the usual wondering about that other lost love. First of all,
the thing that led me back to that fateful decision was something
that I thought of as a kind of "unfinished business." The decision
involved who I should marry, I had, at the time, two very distinct
choices. On the one hand was the woman I had met while far away from
home while in the Army. She came from an entirely different culture
and background than I did. She was lovely, exotic, and not quite
"attainable". I was very lonely and recently hurt by the loss of my
second "true love" who had dumped me two weeks after I left for
basic training.
It's important to note that she was my "second"
true love 'cause my First true love was the one who stood at the
cross roads all of a sudden. She was the girl-of-my-dreams, Charlie
Browns "little red headed girl" who had been the object of my,
unrequited, affections all the way through grade and high schools.
My "second" true love had been a sort of substitute for her, though
not a bad trade off at all.
I had courted this first love relentlessly, and
totally without success for about fifteen years.....and suddenly the
sequence of events unfolded in dizzying speed, I had met the
"exotic" woman, the one who could, theoretically, save me from my
depression and loneliness, and proposed to her. She had accepted and
our wedding plans were very much well underway. I took a week to
return home to fill all the family in on the plans, and to assuage
all the uproar over the fact that she was not of our faith,
ethnicity (this was important to them back then) or life experience
(we were city folk, she was a farm girl, I graduated from high
school, she was in college, etc.). While at home, I called "first
love" and she, unaccountable, responded!
What was I to make of this? Old stirrings whipped
out of date hopes to a froth and we had a date. Turned out she had
had her heart broken recently, which, I now see, made her more
vulnerable, just as I had been, and more open. One thing led to
another and went, somewhat, beyond kissing (I had never even kissed
her before this) and suddenly I was exactly where I had wanted to be
all my young adult life..with my number one dream girl and we were
going to complete the fantasy.
Just that one problem.....I was already well down
the road with the exotic one.
And this problem was compounded by another, I had
made a promise, and I was not, in those innocent days, one who could
break a promise. Not one that big and not one which would involve so
many who had so much "invested". Later, because I didn't break that
one, I broke all of them right and left.
But then, I took the cowards way out and did what
was expected.
This is where I have always stopped this
exploration. But the other day I suddenly came to what anyone else
with an objective eye would have seen by now, I realized that I
could not have become who I am without having taken the road I took
then. And I like who I have become!
I might have liked the other guy too, but I know,
just as sure as I know my self today, that I would not have known
the gifts of the road that choice led me down, and those "gifts"
would not have presented themselves on any other path. Of that I am
certain.
Frost was right of course, that moment did "make
all the difference". So, I bless that choice, made by guilty impulse
or unconscious predestination. To quote another writer of note;
"All's well that ends well."
......and it's not over yet.
