Remembering Thom

I'm reflecting this morning on my high school boyfriend, who would have been 62 today. We met in 7th grade and became fast friends, sharing a similar sense of humor, a love of writing, and an appreciation for the same music.

 

In 11th grade, we became "something more" - though it was a confused affair, as he had not yet arrived at identifying as straight, gay, or bisexual.

I took that somewhat personally, being so young and not feeling all that confident. We parted amicably at the end of high school and he moved to London for a time, where he wrote me letters on the back of gift wrap or whatever else he could find. Then we lost touch for a bit.

 

I saw him in 1988 at our 10-year high school reunion and we had a good, long talk. By then he was living with a man and seemed settled and happy. I felt glad for him.

 

It was the last time I saw him. He was diagnosed with AIDS shortly thereafter and he was near death 2 years later when I finally heard about it from someone else.

 

We wrote a bit, as he was able. Apologized for not letting me know. There was completion between us.

And then he died, a month before his 30th birthday. I had some lovely after-death communication from him. And yet... for years, I felt angry at him for leaving. He had so much life in him. So much more to give and to experience.

 

I know that the choices that others make on a soul-level can't be perceived clearly from our earthly eyes. My friend had arrived astrologically at a crossroads point - his Saturn return. It is then that we are energetically encouraged to take a leap forward into adulthood. I always kind of felt like this was more than he was prepared to do, and so he left this world.

 

I will only add that having known him continues to add to my own understanding about so many things: aliveness, the creative imperative (he became a fabulous artist), sexuality and the curious spectrum we all walk within it, adulthood, soul choices, and death.

 

* This is the two of us in our 17th summer. I had just woken up, and he was trying to pull me into the pool.

September in California

September is here, which brings delicious thoughts of autumn leaves, cool breezes, and relief from the relentless California sun. Though here on the West Coast, these thoughts are pure fantasy, born of stories from the Northeast of rainfall and trees turning and contemplative images of sipping tea, gazing at a picturesque downpour from a window seat, reading a book. 

 

Of course, for many of us, September brings memories of going back to school. There was a ritual that I think has been lost now, as every school year seems to start at a different time. From kindergarten to 12th grade, school began the Tuesday after Labor Day. Labor Day was the time when summer lovers bid a sad farewell to the season. But I was never sad, because I was not a summer girl. I always leaned with longing towards the cooler months. 

 

I remember shopping for school clothes with such excitement in August as a teen, picking out "deep greens and blues" and maroons, browns and rusts... long-sleeves and corduroy pants... only to show up to school on my first day in my favorite new outfit and swelter through the day. Then reluctantly come to school the next day in a summer dress.

 

Growing up in Los Angeles, "cooler months" was relative. One had to pay very close attention to detect the shifts in season. To this day, I still love to sense into those subtle changes. How the shadows shift and the sky becomes more muted. My eye troubles render me sensitive to excessive sunlight, so it is always a wonder when I can go outside without sunglasses. To relax my eyes and just take in the world and its quiet alterations. 

 

We are in the midst of what I hope is the last big heatwave of the summer here in the Bay Area, with a week's worth of temps above 100. I will have to hold onto those visions of autumn for awhile longer!

 

********
 

Art by Catrin Welz Stein.

Crucial Choicepoints

 

In the ten years or so following high school, we each make choices that serve as the architecture of the rest of our lives. Not only the structure of the life that will hold us, but the landscape and geography, the people and particulars that create color and nuance, the shape and form for our life lessons to come.

The simple act of choosing one college over another (or whether to go to college at all) begins to lay our fateful groundwork. Choices made set the stage, while options discarded fade into the distance, along with the entire landscape of a life not chosen.  People, jobs, places, life experiences. All unrealized.

I think it is only far in the distance, after we have made one choice that cascaded into a series of other choices, that we can we reflect on that pivotal and crucial point with  deep awe, considering the complex structure of what we have built versus unknowable alternatives.

I think of my own pinnacle point at 25, as I considered where to go to graduate school. I was living in Sacramento, having just finished my bachelor’s degree in history, knowing that graduate school was the next step in shaping my career direction. A degree in history basically got me, I discovered, a job as a receptionist in a law office. I needed more.

I was persuaded by my dad to pursue a graduate degree in library science. I had been leaning towards museum studies, as I was drawn to three-dimensional history come to life that I had seen in a local living history museum. Yet I knew that the library choice was a more practical one (libraries in every town… and who knew where I would end up?). So I applied to the three graduate programs in the state of California: UCLA, UC Berkeley, and San Jose State. UCLA would take me back to my hometown, which held a lot of appeal. But I discovered that the program requirements included a couple of computer science classes which for a liberal arts minded person like me in 1985 was an intimidating prospect. It was also a two year program as opposed to San Jose State’s eighteen months (I can’t believe one of the factors in this pivotal life choice was the difference of a single semester).

Berkeley seemed somehow gritty and foreign to me and I was not drawn there. The sloppily photocopied form letter accepting me into the program was also off-putting. Shortly after receiving the lackluster acceptance from UC Berkeley, I received a phone call from one of the instructors at San Jose State - a personal phone call welcoming me into the program. This sealed the deal for me. I would move in the fall of 1985 to San Jose.

But what if I had chosen UCLA, and gone back home? Maybe the computer courses wouldn’t have been any big deal, and if they were, maybe I could have gotten a tutor. I would have gotten through. And then I would have settled into life somewhere in Los Angeles.  I had some friends there from high school, scattered. I would have made new friends. Some of them might have been very good, lifelong friends. I would have dated, had numerous relationships. Eventually, I would have likely married.

There is a certain intrigue and appeal to the quantum mechanics theory of Many Worlds, which posits that there are parallel versions of our lives happening simultaneously as the one we’re living. I’ve always somehow had a sense of this, and that in fact these alternate realities are just a whisper away. So if we get quiet enough, we can actually know, even if just vaguely, how those roads not taken were unfolding in another world. I sense this most acutely in connection with people, not places – such as how a relationship would have unfolded if it had a chance to fully actualize. It’s interesting to ponder, to say the least.

So, let’s return to San Jose, and the fall of 1985. My plans were in place to leave Sacramento at the end of August and move to San Jose. But around July, I became uneasy about my decision. Did I really want to be a librarian? Was that really my life purpose? My 25 year old self was having a moment of great self-insight – and she was not wrong. In time, she would discover more that called to her. But in the summer of 1985, my ideas were limited.  However, I was unsure enough to request that my place in the program be delayed a semester. Surely I would have a better idea about the rightness of my choice a few months later.

And so come August, I moved back to LA and took the aforementioned job as a receptionist in a law office. Within a week, I realized I should have just gone ahead and started the program at San Jose State.  I then spent an unremarkable few months in the valley of my birth, leaning with anticipation towards January when I could make the move to San Jose.

But my delay turned out to be a crucial choice that affected my life for many, many years to come. If I had begun the program in the fall as originally planned, I would likely have not met my first husband. By starting the following January, I entered a cohort of students that included him, and we all ventured through the program together.

If I had not met him, I likely would have completed the program and high-tailed it back to LA. I was not crazy about San Jose. I felt I could tolerate it for the length of the program, but that’s it. But I met him, we got involved, and the relationship seemed sort of inevitable. And he had a young son in the area from his first marriage, so he had no interest in leaving San Jose. Dreams I had about possibly doing research for film productions in LA instead of a career in traditional libraries dissipated. I stayed in San Jose.

Even 12 years later when I began my life anew without him, I stayed. By then it was my home. And I had just started a job that I would hold for another 18 years.

My thirty years in the South Bay were certainly not all bad. Part of the domino tiles that fell into place based on the decision to choose San Jose State for graduate studies were the friends I made along the way through jobs, through my second graduate program, and through my life coach training. All of this made up the architecture of my adult life.

If I had chosen LA or even Berkeley, different people, jobs and choices would have created another structure for my life. I used to believe that there are certain soul connections that just need to happen – that we have agreements with each other that are made before we are born, and no matter where we go in life, we will find each other. Maybe our angels nudge us to choose one place over another, to forego one job over another, to engage with one person and not another. But now I think… I don’t really know. There was a guy that I had such a strong sense of for about seven years – I could see what he looked like, the kind of clothes he wore, and perhaps most significantly, his very way of being – and yet, I never met him. I met my second husband and that guy faded out. A path seemingly so close, yet strangely unreachable – and so not taken.

And yet… some connections certainly do seem fated, or at least familiar. Definitely not random and certainly necessary. So what would have happened if I had chosen LA, and missed meeting those who hold such a significant place in my life? Would I have instead encountered other fated connections, relationships that essentially offered me similar opportunities for life lessons? Maybe that’s how it works.