This trip was never about a search for meaning in my life. Long ago I determined to my satisfaction that there is not much meaning in life — it’s just a series of events, some connected and others random. Try and keep them going for as long as possible, for when they stop, you’re done. No matter how good or how bad you are, the chances that anyone will give you more than a moment’s thought a generation after you’re gone aren’t much. Sure, I still think of my grandparents from time to time, my great grandmother even less, but they are distant memories that don’t guide or shape my life.
I do feel the need to give meaning to taking a year off work, ejecting myself from the most American of ideals — to work hard 50 weeks out of the year and feel guilty for two. To take a full year off at the point of my highest earning potential should be more than folly. Yes, there are implications. I have said many times that I am likely trading one year in my fifties for two in my 60s. But why?
As I was walking around Khiva this afternoon, I was thinking about my mother. I haven’t been able to call her since I entered Uzbekistan. The internet is touch and go. The cell service is better, but is expensive to place a voice call. I didn’t think to set up WhatsApp on her cell phone before I left. Tanya will do that next weekend. I feel bad that I haven’t called, but it’s beyond my control.
Mom is 83 and still living somewhat independently in Carrollton, about 100 miles from where I live. Mom did not grow up there. Her parents moved there shortly after she graduated from high school. She moved there after college and started teaching, eventually met and married my father and started a family. She never liked it, but she never left. She often referred to it as Podunk Center USA. She preferred to do her shopping in Kansas City. On more than a few occasions she told us that she was leaving as soon as her kids were out of school. I never worried too much about that and when I left for college, she stayed. She continued to teach until she retired. After she retired, she and Dad took some inheritance from their parents and built a new new house near the edge of town.
Mom had a health scare about the time Dad died about four years ago. At that time, I tried to convince her to move closer to me. She refused. She didn’t to leave Carrollton. I was surprised this seemed to be her lifelong dream and I was offering it to her. But her life was in Carrollton — her church, the minister she has a crush on, the thrift store she volunteers at twice a week, the house she built, the doctor who flatters her — it’s all there. The window for her moving had closed.
As we get older, more windows close, our world gets smaller. This year is about keeping my world as big as possible for as long as possible. That, I guess is both metaphor and reality. Different people have different things they care about. Travel has long interested me and that’s why I am here. Tanya has also broadened herself by giving up travel and taking on an administration role. She has long wanted to help people and sees this role as a way or helping people both directly and by starting new programs and initiatives. She is ambitious and trying to change her department and University for the better. We have taken different paths but both have a similar goal — to breathe new life into lives that were getting a little too normal — to keep our worlds as big as possible for as long as possible. And if it doesn’t work out, we have proven that we are flexible and can change.