Ed's Big Adventure

Prognosticating, 18 years ago, I saw this day coming as a lumbering freight train. Impossible to stop. Inbound with a load of depression to feather our nest. Outbound with all our kids.

Always in the distant future, I didn’t think about it much…

Twindom overwhelmed us for centuries, it seemed. From day 1, we felt behind. Always catching up. Collecting pieces. Our best seemed almost good enough. Throughout this entire period I’ve relayed the same feeling:

I feel like an expert through yesterday, but I have no clue about today.

And the kids grew and grew. There was evening, and there was morning. Days stringing into months and years.

Parents honed gifts at about the pace of a child’s development. I especially envied Shawna’s progress. Her works sprang up like mushrooms, ever in the background. While I traveled to a cubicle for unexplainable work, the kids understood what Shawna did. I’m grateful that most of those early pieces failed to sell. They’re for us, on permanent display in the Hall of Rejects.

Those first nine years, childhood neatly cleaved as before and after, I wrestled. What should I do?

As the world moved through the upheavals of a Great Recession, into the iPhone era, etc, I discovered that avoiding a decision is a choice in and of itself.

And then, the choice was made for me.

Cubicle Land, ever-ravenous, had digested all the tasty bits. Finally arriving at skin, bones, and gristle, the leviathan spewed me out. I washed up on the shores of a wasteland with no tangible or transferrable skills.

A perilous journey lay ahead that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But, it was necessary for becoming.

Five years later, in 2019, I off-handedly remarked to a neighbor that I was tired of saying no to ice cream.

“We never say no to ice cream.”

What?????????!!!!!!!!

This innocuous comment sent me into a tailspin. Our kids had entered high school, and here I was still pinching pennies. Were we wasting what little time was left?

So, I resolved to quit. It was time to get a job. Problem was, I couldn’t land one. When the pandemic arrived a year later, the jobs all dried up.

It wasn’t until this turbulent period that everything became clear. We purchased this computer to support distance learning, and I began writing in the mornings before Josiah needed it for school.

That unique combination of brainwork followed by the farm’s bodywork finally resolved the unending question:

What should I do with my life?

It’s impossible to overstate how liberating it is to no longer have this question spinning in the background, draining bandwidth and sucking me dry. It’s an unanswerable dilemma that can’t be thought out of. One must do. Appreciate. Enjoy. Keep going. Eventually the thicket clears.

So, on the eve of the dreaded freight train’s arrival, when Joey said, “This is the last night of our childhood,” I no longer feared it, but went to bed without much commemoration. Now dark, he was finally home from work. Necessity forces them to pay for most of what they want.

Here at mutual adulthood, I’m delighted by two surprising discoveries:

1. This is merely the end of the beginning. The race continues.
2. The entire process of raising twins has been an otherworldly experiment involving equal measurements of Nature vs Nurture. These beings are opposites in almost every conceivable way. How is that possible? It’s a fantastic mystery that’ll occupy me for some time.

As one leaves for the fancy university, and the other stays, I relish the prospect of enjoying their diverging paths. Most surprisingly, I feel no anxiety for them.

Difficult circumstances forced us not to hold onto them so tightly. What a gift! Left to my own devices, I likely would have drifted into destructive micro-managing.

My best work lies ahead. The race isn’t over. Producing meaningful work, contributing to society in some small way, is an ongoing gift to our kids. Unfulfilled parents who drift through life, lacking mooring or meaning, are a drag on the next generation. Thankfully, we steered clear of that quagmire.

And so, I’ll continue a daily descent into the mine. It’s dark down there, but every now and again I come upon a rich deposit that glows luminously. Beautiful, I carry some back to the surface.