The Final Chance

Many years ago, when I first moved to the States, I met a woman with two young sons who lived in the apartment next to mine. We soon became friends, and when she was home from work we often got together for coffee, and chatted about different things. One day, she told me a story that remained with me throughout the years.

She and her husband had gotten into an argument, and they had gone to bed angry at each other. The next morning, she heard his alarm clock, but pretended to be asleep – she was still angry and refused to speak to him before he left. The husband went to work – he was a truck driver – and she slowly got up, and got ready to leave the house to go to her own job.

He called her a couple of hours later, tried to make small talk, and told her he loved her, but since she was still angry, she coldly told him she was busy and quickly hung up the phone. The phone rang again, and assuming it was still her husband, she chose not to answer. After a few rings, the line went silent.

That night she stopped by the grocery store on her way home, and lingered a while before going to pick up her two children from her sister’s house – she wasn’t ready to argue again, but was still steamed enough from the previous night to feel edgy at the thought of seeing her husband. It was a cold, rainy night in January, and she knew the children were hungry and tired, so she reluctantly drove home.

When she pulled into her driveway she was surprised to see the house completely dark, but it was even stranger that her husband’s truck wasn’t in the driveway. He was a creature of habit, and he was home by five every day. She and the children walked in and she started the usual routines. While she cooked, she replayed in her mind the argument she and her husband had the night before; by then, time had defused a bit of her anger and she felt calmer. She figured they would make up and forget once he got home.

When the doorbell rang, she opened the door and was ready to say she was sorry, but her words froze in her mouth as she laid eyes on the two police officers standing in front of her. They informed her that her husband had been in an accident. A car had skidded off the road and had headed directly toward his truck; to avoid the car he had turned sharply and had lost control of his vehicle, dying on impact.

We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Just as much as we don’t need to live in fear, we also don’t need to take everything for granted. Please watch this beautiful video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx87cAE20oM , and see how important it is to acknowledge and forgive others, even if our differences seem insurmountable.

A bruised ego can cause some discomfort. Regret certainly causes more.

Letters to Myself

“Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls; for, thus friends absent speak.” ~John Donne


When I first moved to the States - and hardly knew anyone - I lived to see the mailman’s truck pull up, everyday. I waited by the window with the same eagerness of a child on Christmas Eve, and through the daily deliveries of a skinny Santa dressed in blue I felt a little less alone. Although I was excited at the prospect of starting a new life away from home, I was only nineteen, and I missed my friends and family - through letters, their love and support hugged me like a pair of old familiar arms.

As time went by, the phone calls continued daily, but the letters soon became a thing of the past. I slowly lost touch with several friends, and as phone rates became more affordable, the conversations with my family gradually shifted to a spoken exchange rather than a written one. I still have all the letters, and read them again from time to time.

Yesterday, as I was telling a friend how happy I am about the upcoming publication of my books, she suggested I hang on to some of that happiness. She went on to explain that since she was a little girl, she always wrote notes to her future self, and then saved them for a later time when she would need to hear comforting words.

If she was very happy, she told me, she would write a note in which she shared her good news, and encouraged herself to relive the exhilaration of that happy moment. If, later on, she read the note at a time when she felt a bit low on herself, she could reconnect to what had happened in the past and feel better.

Similarly, if she was very angry or sad, she would write her future self a letter about what upset her. Reading it later, after the storm had passed, showed her that all things are temporary, and are rarely as bad as we think they are while we are going through them.

I found her suggestion totally fascinating. I have written letters to others I wanted to share feelings with before, but I’ve never written anything to myself. How fun would it be now, if I could read letters written during the time when I struggled to adjust to a new way of life, or I got frustrated because of the challenges of speaking a new language? And what about those moments when I felt I could just scream out of sheer happiness, such as when I found out I was going to be a mom, or when my husband proposed?

I wish I could read those letters now. It would certainly be fun to compare my life today to something written so long ago, and it would certainly be encouraging to see that obstacles which appeared at the time as solid bricks on my path were nothing more than removable Legos.

It’s obviously too late to recapture those moments from long ago and put them down on paper right now, but it is definitely possible to begin doing so with my life’s latest happenings. In fact, I think I will start today.

Dear Santa, I Thought You Could Read My Mind...

How many times in our lives do we receive gifts we don’t really need or want, and seethe internally because the other person was not sensible enough to anticipate our true wishes?
We may come up on a birthday, or other Holiday, and, once asked what we would like, our answer simply is: “Oh, you don’t have to worry about a gift. I really can’t think of a thing.” Deep down, we expect to be showered with lavish gifts and attention because the other person SHOULD want to make us happy, but our pride stops us from expressing what we really want. We expect people to read minds, and are disappointed if the other party’s “psychic” qualities are not as sharp as we thought.
Many years ago, I used to work at a downtown hotel as front desk supervisor. The reservation manager surprised us one morning by telling us that she would be leaving.
My heart leapt at the opportunity; I really wanted that job. I immediately went to the front office manager and volunteered to keep up with the reservation work after my colleague left. The two weeks passed by. I arranged my schedule so I could be in the reservation office during the day, and still be able to oversee front desk operations. By now, I thought, the job was certainly mine. I had learned anything there was to learn about reservations, and could envision the front office manager coming up to me and beg me to take the position.
About a week after that, bright and early one morning, a young girl showed up at the front desk and asked for me. She told me her name and said that she had been hired for the reservation manager position; furthermore, the front office manager told her that I would be training her, and how excited I would probably be to resume my regular job.
I was floored. All I had hoped for, and worked so hard to achieve, was crumbling in front of me like a house of cards. Maybe there was a mistake, I thought.
But it was no mistake. Jane took over the reservation office, and I went back to my old job. What went wrong? Why didn’t I get the position?
I realized then that I had never asked for the job after all. I volunteered to help, yes, but never formally said anything about wanting the position. In fact, every chance I had, I always reminded the front office manager how much I loved my regular job and my customers! I had dug my own career’s grave by not stating clearly what I really wanted, assuming that he could read my mind.
Most of us readily expect others to KNOW what we wish, but we are the only ones who know what’s important to us.
That situation taught me to be more direct and make sure that people know exactly what I expect. Whether they will comply or not is a different thing, but at least I will never have to beat myself up for losing an opportunity to the demon of improper communication.