Chapter 13 #2
Walter goes somewhere, a dreamy look on his face. Like he’s picturing the type of vacation this would have been with his late wife.
“What kind of work did you do?”
“Oh, nothing interesting. I was an accountant, but I thought work was too important to take time off. I closed the accounting firm every year between Christmas and New Year’s, and we took all the normal holidays, but I never went anywhere.
When my kids were little, we didn’t travel.
We would go camping maybe an hour or two away over a long weekend in the summer, but my kids didn’t get on an airplane until they were in college.
They’re world travelers now, been so many places I can’t even name them all. ”
“What are your kids’ names?”
Walter pulls out his phone and clicks it on. Four adults and four kids smiling in matching Christmas sweaters appear on the screen.
“This is Tyler and his wife, Kara, and that’s Daphne and her husband, Marcus.” He points to the people on each end in the photo and then points to each child and names them, telling me a little about each of them.
“This is so lovely, Walter. Thanks for sharing that. What do they think of you being here?”
“They were so excited they paid for an excursion each.”
He shows me a few more pictures, the pride and love for each of his kids and grandkids so intense that it probably isn’t just their ears burning, but their whole heads.
“Walter, can I ask you something?” I ask, picking at the remnants of food on my plate. “Since we’re not being nosy and all.”
“Please, I’m an open soul,” he says, opening his arms.
“Did you mean an open book?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says with a wink and a chuckle.
“Do you have regrets? I don’t want to assume, but the way you’re talking, you sound like maybe the way you lived your life isn’t the way you’d do it all over again if you could.”
He crosses his arms in front of his chest, looking off to the left and up, considering my question.
“I think I do. You know, I loved my life, but I do wish I had taken my wife traveling. I wish I’d taken the kids more places.
Wish I hadn’t spent so much time working.
I only have so much life left, and I plan to live it the way I wish I had.
I won’t get the chance to travel with my wife, but I’d like to go somewhere with my kids and grandkids.
“The days are long and the years are short, and one day you’re going to blink and you’ll be my age, and at my age, I have too much and not enough time.
My days are endless and the clock is ticking on my years.
Take it from a man who lived the same life for over fifty years…
do whatever it takes to make it your own. ”
I’ve been so caught up in how stressful everything is right now and how it would feel in the immediate future to change careers, start over, leave teaching. But I hadn’t considered the long-term impact.
If I kept teaching, would I get to retirement and wish I had changed careers when I was younger? Will I get to my seventies and wish I had pursued something that felt like mine?
I’d planned on being an artist after graduating, but sometime during my sophomore year of college, when I started to paint a picture of what life would look like after graduation, the reality became clear—I’d probably need to move back home and live with my parents while getting a career up and running.
Making it full-time as an artist in any capacity is difficult without a large infusion of cash or savings, neither of which I had.
I couldn’t do that to them. They’d just spent eighteen years running themselves to the bone to take care of me.
My art major started to feel really selfish, and I had to accept that I needed something with more stability, something with health insurance and steady pay, something that would not require me to take more from the people who had already given so much.
Before the start of my junior year, I officially changed my major to art education.
I don’t regret my time in teaching, but would that change with age? What if the years got harder; what if I got sicker; what if I started to hate the job?
“But what if I change my life and I hate it? What if I leave my career and I find that I hate the next thing I try?” I ask. Because of course I’ve thought about this part of it.
“Then you try again. And you try until you find the thing that you do love.”
“And if I find at the end of it all that I love the original thing the most?”
“Then you go back to it. It’s as simple as that.”
When he says it like that, it does sound simple. But I know it won’t be in practice, otherwise I might have changed things sooner. Sometimes, it’s easier to stand still and pretend the world doesn’t feel stale and lifeless than to risk the comfort of a life I know so well.
“Are you scared of change, Walter?”
“Nothing changes if nothing changes,” he says.
“That didn’t answer my question.”
“The only people who like change are the people who use it as a way to escape. It’s not change they like; it’s novelty. Changing things can be a way for people who feel out of control to gain control in their lives. The rest of us know that change is terrifying and inevitable.”
“So you don’t like it?”
“I can’t say I like it, but I’ve learned to embrace it like an old friend. Or a cold beer,” he says with that mischievous smile. “Plus, change usually means there are good things around the corner. Because I changed, I got to meet you.”
And this time, when we smile at each other, we do so not as strangers, but friends.