On Resolutions, Life Decisions, and the Kids

So, the man knows how to put a smile on my face after all, and he did it on New Year’s Eve.

“Elizabeth’s on the phone,” he says, as you can see on her blog, where she’s talking to me, both of us in our pyjamas. What are holidays for?

We talked about all sorts of things, as we’ve done over the years. Once, we'd talked over our college choices and life plans, but this time, we were talking about those of our children.

It doesn't seem that long ago (but I suppose it was) when we were recent graduates talking to our friends Michael and Ben who were still in their universities and making these Big Life Decisions for themselves. They asked us what we’d studied, and what we were doing with our lives so far.

Elizabeth had studied the Classics, and was then working at McDonald’s. Michael turned to Ben and said, “Right. Don’t study Classics.” Then they asked me.

I had studied French Literature, and was a floor-sweeper at a gay bar.

As I recall, it was Ben who started to cry first. I think I was a close second. But it was the late 1980’s, and hey a job was a job, then. Things got better later on--they always do.

At the time, it might have seemed we’d chosen the wrong degree programmes or careers, but look at us twenty years later: it’s all good now. Life’s had some twists and turns and surprises, but today Elizabeth and I both have happy healthy kids, husbands who love us, houses and mortgages and cars and all the other things that tell the world we’re safely grown up and doing something we love for a living.

Better still, look at the two of us even without all that: we’ve been friends for thirty-seven years. That’s gold.

So, if I give any advice to our kids, it would be this: Don’t worry. Yeah, you’ll make a wrong decision or two. Hell, you might make a whole lot of them---I certainly have. I like to say I just took the scenic route, getting here.

Any road trip has its share of uncertainty, confused directions and a wrong turn or two. You can either sit in the driveway all your life because you’re terrified of getting lost out there in the big world, or you can pull out into it anyhow, and have the drive of your life, no matter where it takes you.

So off you go, kids. Hit the road, and make your mistakes and wrong turns. Just be sure that when you do, you remember to enjoy the scenery on the ride back to the highway, or home again, or to a whole new place where all your dreams come true.

And hey — don’t forget to send your old folks a postcard!