Long Burn

Making sense of it

When I was 17 I told a friend named Joe Mamer that I wanted him to look me up someday and that if I had ended up in a job where I was sitting behind a desk that he was supposed to shoot me. I voiced similar opinions regarding other middle age activities such as listening to jazz, teaching and sipping wine. Joe, you oughtta see me now! Here I am at the ripe age of 39 asking the same ripe questions I did 22 years ago-- Who am I? How did I get here? What does it all mean? Last week I ran into a student who was in my physics of molecules class last year. She said I looked depressed. Yes I said, I have too much teaching and my son is sick and I have to prepare three presentations for an institute retreat this weekend. I saw her again yesterday and she said I was looking a little better. 'Just take all your troubles and put them on Miss Reeler's shoulders!' she said. How kind! Then she and her pals asked how it was that an American like me ended up in Denmark. I said that there are two reasons. The first is that I fell madly in love with a Swede and the second I said, I was just going to put on her shoulders. If I don't understand it myself, how could I ever hope to describe it to someone else? My Mom told me once that her Mom once told her, towards the end of her life, that it seemed like everything in her life had happened for a reason.

posted by Matt_J @ 10:38 AM