Crossroads

When I was in college, having a minor in Italian, I studied the Divine Comedy. The circles of hell were the most fascinating to my 20-something self; Dante’s “middle of life’s journey” was incomprehensible. Forty seemed unreachable then.

I’m beginning to understand that midpoint now. It seems like a crucial time – “crucial” as related to the root of the word, “crux,” or “cross.” I’m at a crossroads, and the choices I make now will shape the kind of elder I become.

According to Erik Erikson, the developmental choice during the middle years is between generativity and stagnation. The choice is a stark one, and the temptation to stagnation is terrible. How easy it would be to coast until I die! How tempting to stop trying, to stop fighting, to stop challenging myself. It’s like syrup, that sticky temptation.

The other pull is to generativity – the pull to pass on what I’ve learned. This includes a direct transmission of knowledge, but also the passing on that is done through action and behavior, as well as through words.

For most of my life, I’ve considered myself a loner and a writer. My volunteer position is challenging me on both counts. I’m challenged to work on relationships – relationships with executives because I hold the volunteer equivalent of an executive position, and relationships with people younger than I am who have different skills than I have.

In both cases, one of the challenges is to stand up straight and act out of my gifts, to hold my head up and say, in action if not in words, “Yes, I am leading a team. We are doing this work that enables my supervisor to do other work. Without us, this amount and quality of work would not get done. And without me, the team would not be as strong as it is.”

I’m afraid of responsibility, and there have been times in my life when I’ve ducked out from under it. Responsibility can feel like a burden. It can feel overwhelming. For me, having responsibility carries the fear of failure.

It is important that I not duck the responsibility this position offers me. I have opportunities to recognize and facilitate the development of others’ gifts. Part of my responsibility as a leader is to ask myself, “Who on the team could some day hold the position I hold now? What can I do to help that person grow into such a position?”

This position also offers me ongoing opportunities and challenges to recognize and develop my own gifts. Yes, I am a wordsmith. I will love words as long as my mind allows me to use them. There is comfort in putting that label on myself.

But I am also able to lead a team. I am able to relate successfully to a variety of personalities, to recognize and facilitate the use of others’ gifts. I am able to acknowledge my own mistakes and to move on without wallowing in them.

So, as uncomfortable as it can be, as tempting as stagnation is, I must continue to move ahead. My control over the aging of my body is limited; for my spirit, I must continue to choose expansion and growth.

And We’re Off!

My sister and I are beginning to plan another trip. For me, the planning is part of the fun of the trip! It’s the beginning of learning more about another country. In this case, we’ll both be learning “survival German” as well.

I speak Spanish and Italian and a bit of French already, but German is another story. German has declensions! The form of a noun changes depending on how it’s used in a sentence. Is it the subject? A direct object? An indirect object? These nouns have identity crises!

The fun thing about learning another language is that you pick up a taste of the culture as well. The Romance languages have formal and informal “you” forms; so does German. So speakers have the option of indicating degrees of familiarity just by their grammar choices.

This is not a feature of English and I miss it, although English is my first language. I can’t use grammar to indicate that someone is a friend or a peer, as I can in French, Italian and Spanish (and soon German!). I can’t, with a simple verb form, indicate respect for an elder.

German will be more of a challenge than Spanish, Italian and French were. I was 16 when I started studying Spanish, which was not as foreign as it might have been if I hadn’t taken Latin. And I am older, long past the prime years for learning a new language. I expect my mind to be more resistant to the language, my spirit more resistant to the culture.

But the new world that will open to me will be worth the trek ahead. Onward!

Gumption

 

My people weren’t fancy – not on either side of my family. My maternal grandfather came from a tiny town in Sicily that we reached via a hair-raising drive requiring the skills of an Indy race car driver. To this day, raw meat hangs in the butcher shop window, and the evening’s entertainment is a stroll with your neighbors. (It’s far more fun than it sounds!)

My paternal grandfather ‘s family was equally salt-of-the-earth. He was born in an Ohio village that at its largest boasted fewer than 300 souls.. The steeple of his family’s parish church still dominates the skyline.

It wasn’t an idyllic life. His father died at 49, while Grandpa was still a teenager. That left his mother with at least one dependent child at home. That younger sister also died a few years later, of diphtheria. Although I didn’t seek out their graves, they are surely among those buried in the cemetery not far from that church.

Grandpa Chimera didn’t have it any easier. As a young man, he and his surviving siblings traveled those twisting roads to Palermo, where they embarked for the United States. In his New World, he suffered the loss of his wife just months after my mother’s birth.

My grandparents were not pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps successes. Both of my grandfathers were blue-collar workers, and Grandpa Chimera’s English was comprehensible but broken all his life. Grandpa Shuler, as I recall, didn’t go beyond eighth grade.

But I am proud to come from this stock. I am proud that they had the gumption to leave their small worlds for what they saw as something better, although perhaps also frightening.

I need to remember the courage that produced me.