The road not taken

 

In the late 1970s I was sitting in my cousin's apartment in Augsburg, Germany laughing hard as her husband did an Andy Rooney type monologue on the uses of wax paper, cling film, aluminum, sandwich bags, etc.

I had just accepted a job at the local U.S. Army Base as marketing director for their credit union at a big pay cut, but it meant I could live in Europe. I'd found a flat and had the money to buy my kitchen. In Germany, when people move, they take the kitchens with them.

Somehow, it didn't seem right and I changed my mind, went back to France to job hunt. Talk about bumpy roads. Much went wrong from their on. I had to return to the states because my mother was dying of cancer, job opportunities were less than wonderful, but I did find a temporary niche. 

After my mother died, I flew to France for want ads. Using directories and whatever I could find anywhere I mailed out 800 CVs (resumes). I'd head to the post office with a bag of envelopes. The clerk there was undergoing chemo and we would chat when there wasn't a line.

Then a new path opened. I was hired for a job in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and my dream of living in Europe was back.

I often wonder what would happen if I'd stayed in Germany. Eventually my cousins were sent home, the base was closed where she worked as a civilian nurse, so I'd have been looking for work anyway. I'm sure I would have made friends, but the friends I've made in Switzerland and France are wonderful.

My financial situation was certainly better when I changed jobs. By accident of taking the Geneva job, I discovered my new organization had the best retirement plan in the canton.

I found a flat owned by an individual who became a wonderful friend over the years instead of dealing with the dreaded Reagie, the Swiss realtors who rent apartments. At the time I didn't know about the Reagies because my first employee had put me in a company apartment that I shared with RB2, who became a trusted friend.

The Geneva Writers Group became my literary sanctuary and led to me discovering the Masters Degree Programme in Creative Writing in Glamorgan, Wales. My M.A. let me fill my desire to teach on a college level part time.

As an international city, in Geneva I met people from all over the world, including an ambassador or two, which gave me insight into world affairs that would never have happened had I stayed in Augsburg. I learned so much about different countries both from what they told me and from their invitations to their different countries.

And my husband came back into my life. A LinkedIn message said, "I'm in Geneva, would you like a coffee." We had been professional colleagues a few decades before and lost track of each other in pre-internet days.That would never have happened if I followed the German path. 

Every now and then there's a story or a movie where they show what would have happened when the character has two choices and both are shown..

Although I might be curious about life on the Augsburg path, the Swiss path led to such happiness, I can't imagine more. This does not mean things were perfect...there might have been a stone or a pothole on the path, but the scenery has been spectacular.

Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.