April 16, 2008

Better Not to Know?

We were getting ready to watch a DVD and my mother was reading the back of the box. "Mystery of the Wax Museum?" she said with a note of awe in her voice. "I don't believe it."

Then she told us a story. It was 1933. She was nine years old. Her mother, who usually was far too busy to spend time with her younger daughter, suddenly suggested they go to the movies, a rare treat. Thrilled, little Francile proudly walked with her mother up to 30th and Illinois in Indianapolis, to the Ritz movie palace.

They stopped outside the theater while my grandmother read the movie poster. "This is far too scary for a child. You'll have nightmares."

It was a sullen, disappointed little girl who walked all the way back home without seeing a longed-for movie. The movie deemed too frightening for children was "Mystery of the Wax Museum."

So, 74 years later, Mom finally got to see the terrifying tale of body snatching and evil-doing, starring Fay Wray. It would, indeed, have been too scary for her nine-year-old self, she declared.

This got me thinking about how surprising our lives turn out to be. That little girl had no idea (how could she?) that she would be watching the movie on television (what's a television?) with her grown daughter and her husband in their living room in San Carlos, California.

What would she have thought if she had foreseen that? She might have been comforted to know that she would eventually get to watch that movie. On the other hand, how could she possibly have handled seeing a glimpse of herself in her eighties? It would have been incomprehensible.

Looking back over a lifetime is often a exercise in wonder. Amazement at the role that happenstance plays in our lives. Astonishment that simply being in one place rather than another determines the direction one's life will take.

In my case, choosing a particular dorm in college resulted in meeting the man who would become my first husband and the father of my children. He happened to live across the alley from Coronado Hall. If I had chosen Arizona Hall, my sons might not exist.

And so it goes. We turn one way instead of another and we are saved from a terrible accident. We stay home one night instead of going out with our friends and miss meeting our soul mate. We take a temporary job just to pay the rent and end up staying there for 30 years.

Happily, I am not clairvoyant. I don't know what Life or God or Fate has planned for me. I make choices based sometimes on my best reasoning and sometimes on sheer intuition. So far, it has worked out more or less the way it's supposed to.

We all go through major change over the course of our lifetimes. Thank goodness we go through it one day at a time.

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