It wasn’t a normal night at all. She was sick and ran to the bathroom several times which was quite unusual. The lights went on and off, there was a phone call to the doctor. I didn’t know it was to the doctor until later in the morning. By then she was already dead.
Before that night my life had been on one track. It was simply my life. I didn’t think about it being on a track. I didn’t think about it being the course of my life and/or whether that course was normal or not normal or anything like that. Before that night things simply were. The next day they were vastly different.
Even though life changed and things were vastly different, I still didn’t think about the course of my life, how it was before and how it was after that event. I lived my life day by day doing what had to be done. I was now a child with no mother, a child being raised by his father, a child in a broken family although we didn’t know it was a broken family.
So that day changed the course of my life, or, metaphorically, it was as if my life had switched tracks like a train does.
Now when that train changes tracks and travels along, at first the distance between the two tracks is relatively minimal. The further that train goes on the new track, the greater the distance between the tracks.
I’ve often written about the day I got busted. That was the next time, at least on a grand scale, when my life switched tracks. I had been very close to college graduation but found myself with a criminal record (copping a plea was the only way to be able to complete college) so that my plans to become a professional, maybe a social worker or a teacher, were continually thwarted by police checks. Every time I would apply for a job, the police check would come up positive for having a record and having been in jail. Of course I would not be hired.
I spent 25 years in kitchens. Prior to the day I got busted I had never thought of being a cook or a chef or of being anything other than a writer and maybe a teacher.
By the time I got busted the distance between the original track my life was on and the one I was on at the time of my arrest was already great. After that second switch of tracks, by the time I started working in kitchens my life had no resemblance to what it might have been had my mother not died and if I hadn’t gotten busted.
After 25 years in kitchens, although I kept writing all along, sometimes I couldn’t even see where I had wanted to be, where I had always thought I would have been.
Who knows? Who knows anything?
So the point of this isn’t really about me. Of course it’s about me, but not really. The point of this is about the course our country is on. Let me say that again. The point of this is about the course our country is on.
It’s not about politics. We are way beyond politics now. It’s about train tracks. Our country has been on many different train tracks. It has made some switches, most of them pretty good. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil rights movement. Women got to vote.
You get the idea.
But take a look at where we’re at today. Forget the left. Forget the right. Look at the big picture. Listen to what the politicians are saying on both sides. Don’t listen to the media or the posts in social media, including this one. Look and listen and think for yourself. See what track America is on.
Is it the track you want it to be on?
