All experiences teach lessons. My experiences have generally taught lessons like: don’t drink Guinness and gin half and halfs after you’ve been doing straight shots of 100 proof whiskey out of a steel musket barrel on a freezing balcony. Those lessons – heeded or not – have stood me in good stead ‘lo these many years.
And then Mom died, much too young, relatively suddenly, and definitely horribly. And that taught a new lesson; but this lesson was different. This lesson was: live in the now. And I don’t mean some sissified, Dead Poets Society, Carpe Diem crap. Live now. Because life is finite and you damned sure don’t know when the finiteness will take effect. So there’s no point in planning and hoping, scrimping and saving, expecting and waiting. You had better goddamn well accomplish what you want to right goddamn now because there may not be a later.
Or as my Grandfather used to say, “Take your time, you got two goddamned seconds.”
Naturally, being me, I took a careful and measured approach towards the implementation of this new lesson. I considered my options, weighed my opportunities, determined how I could simultaneously fulfill my many responsibilities while adapting to this new reality.
Nah. Not my style.
I’m chucking it all. My job of eight years? Over as of tomorrow. My home of fifteen plus? Abandoned next Friday. My life, family, friends, routine? Sorry folks, I hope you’ll forgive me but I’m buggering off. Responsibility never rested easy on my shoulders anyway. Time to try living without some for a change.
I’m taking a summer vacation. I’ll start by being on the Normandy beaches for the anniversary of D-Day on June 6. Then I think I’ll be a bohemian in Monmartre for a few days and maybe ogle the Mona Lisa whilst sampling French cuisine in the City of Lights. I have a standing invitation to visit my cousin while he summers in Cortona, Italy which visit almost necessitates at least a short visit to Rome. I’ve several friends to visit then in Portsmouth and somewhere in the vast English countryside not to mention some time reacquainting myself with the pubs of London.
I’ll be back for the sacred Fourth – have to be on United States soil for that one. And then, praying that gasoline is not $20 a gallon, I plan to circumnavigate the country. Down the East Coast to Daytona by way of Nags Head, Savannah and St. Augustine. Across the Florida peninsula to Tampa, then west along I-10 by way of Tallahassee, Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, San Antonio, Phoenix, and all the way to Los Angeles. Some quality time in Santa Monica, Hollywood, and LA followed by a trip up the West Coast to Sacramento and the start of the Great Transcontinental Railroad. I intend to follow the track of that road back to Council Bluffs, Iowa by way of the Great Salt Lake and the Golden Spike and Promontory Point.
After that, who knows? Where will I end up? What will I do? Right now I’m thinking someplace warm and close to the water in a state with low taxes. Somewhere on the Gulf Coast presumably. And what will I do? I’m thinking teaching. I expect I’d enjoy it and be good at it. And a three-month vacation every year is not a thing to be taken lightly.
Brothers and Sisters, I have had all I can stand and I can’t stands no more. So, I’m not gonna. I’ll be seeing you.