July 2018

I was going through old computer files this morning and stumbled on something I wrote a few years ago that seems even more appropriate to think on as I get older.  And older......




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REGRET – IT’S JUST A WORD

            Recently while reading a magazine in a doctor's office waiting room, I saw that the magazine was sponsoring an Essay Contest.   My writer's radar perked up.  A writing challenge?  For money?  For a bit of fame?  All one had to do was answer the following question in 1500 words or less:  If you could change one decision you made in your life, which would it be?

            Oh dear.  Regrets.  Regrets.  Thus began my memory bank scan; trolling for something to write about.  Something entertaining but not too embarrassing.  Having the advantage of many years, there was no shortage of questionable decisions, varying from critical to banal to just plain stupid. Could I actually write about any of them? I began to imagine them on a colorful Wheel of Fortune, spinning and finally stopping on the following.

            When I was sixteen years old I lived in Rhode Island and had a regular babysitting job with a French family in my neighborhood who were visiting the States for one year.  The family name escapes me now, but somehow I still remember their cute little French-speaking children, a boy and a girl, named Gilles and Fleur.  I was an A student in my first year of high school French and loved being able to practice with them.  My language was rudimentary, but I could communicate well enough with them.  "A couche!" I said when it was time for bed, and off they went!  I was speaking real French with French people!  How pleased I was with myself.  When it came time for the family to return to France, they made an incredible offer.  Would I be interested in coming along, to live with them and study in Paris for one year and continue babysitting the children? 

            Excitement and fear gripped me.  I'd never traveled much, other than a few family camping vacations to New Hampshire and one big RV trip to Quebec.  But I'd never been on an airplane -- France was an ocean away!  Did I speak the language well enough?  What if I got homesick?   I would miss my friends.  What high school drama back home would I miss out on?  Would I be bored?  Did they have television in France?  Did they know about the Beatles?  What if I hated it there?  My father teased me and said, "You shouldn't pass this up because you fear toilet paper in France won't be as soft as you're used to.  Opportunities like this only come around once."  After agonizing over the decision, my fear won out and I chose to stick to the safety of the familiar.  Home.  To this day I wonder why my parents gave me a choice and didn't simply go ahead and sign me up.

            Years later, when I was fortunate to experience quite a few trips to a number of European countries including France, I realized what a momentous fork in the road that offer was.  How different my life might have been!

            What if I had gone to Paris when I was sixteen?  How would things have been different for me?  Perhaps my college ap would have been more impressive and I wouldn't have been rejected from Harvard.  Perhaps I would have majored in a more interesting and employable French instead of psychology.  My generation wanted to save the world; perhaps I would have joined the Peace Corps and changed the lives of starving children in Africa.  I picture myself teaching peace and love to the Hutus and Tutsis and preventing genocide in Rwanda.  Or, Perhaps I would have stayed in France and attended the Sorbonne in Paris.  Later I might have met a Frenchman to be my husband (he would have been very romantic and rich!).  I could have become a pencil-thin, fashion-conscious, unsmiling cheese-binging cigarette smoker with a yappy purse-dog always with me.  Perhaps one August night I might have been enjoying some jazz piano at the smoky bar in the Ritz Hotel, chatted up Princess Diana while Dodi was in the mens room.  She might have been so captivated by my ex-pat stories that she might have chosen not to leave to get in a car with a drunken chauffeur that fateful night. 

            If I'd gone to France for a year at age 16 I could have changed history!!

            On the other hand, I could have gotten sliced into pieces in Rwanda, or joined my new friend Diana in that car.   Perhaps my romantic French husband would have kept six mistresses and my cheese and cigarette diet might have led to an early heart attack.

            I could have gone to Paris and returned to little Rhode Island changed to a worldly, snobby girl; looking down at my friends and family as provincial, not fitting in, sniffing at the idea of a peanut butter sandwich.  How can you put her back on the farm after she's seen Pahree?  Or I could have arrived in Paris and quickly decided I was lonely and miserable, unable to tolerate the rough toilet paper.  I might have immediately begged my parents to bring me home, adding yet another excruciating failure experience in my young life that had already suffered from a C or two on my report card, wallflower status at dances, a serious bicycle accident, lusting after a boy who fell for my best friend, and being kicked off the cheerleading squad.  Oh, and then my rejection from Harvard.  Ah well. Teen angst might have reigned supreme whether I went to Paris or not.

            Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

            Some people say life can be a bowl of cherries.  I think of it this way: Life is like a cherry tree; each decision along the branches reaching up and out toward the blossom and fruit.  The branches on the tree of my life could have had an infinite number of different outcomes.   Had I studied in Paris when I had the chance, some other blossom would have bloomed for me, perhaps a bigger, more colorful one, perhaps a bud that never burst open at all. 

            I'll take the cherry blossoms I have in my hand.

            This magazine essay contest is not for me.  Do I regret not going to Paris when I was sixteen? What about all those other decisions on that spinning wheel? Regret? Hell NO. Regret is just a word.