Adventure of a Lifetime

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

 

This post might seem different than what you might have expected.  The phrase I used for the title is usually tied to some one time event…hang gliding…bungee jumping…or something unique and exciting.  But what I’m writing about is no less exciting…if exciting is what you’re looking for. 

We live in an amazing age and in this era we share, there’s social media.  For most Facebook is a way to spend (or waste) time reading posts and rants about things we might not even care about.  But it is also a way that people reconnect.  A way that did not exist even a generation ago.  So it was that a childhood neighbor and friend reached across the 54 years of separation and “touched” me.  In doing so she reminded me of those years long shoved into the dusty file cabinets of my memory, the two and a half years my family lived in Florida.  

My father was a farmer, which in the early 60’s meant we, the whole family, were farmers.  And being farmers, the type of farmer my father was, the climate of central Florida was not a good fit.  The summer’s heat and humidity made the work he was required to do more than difficult.  Added to the fact that 1100 miles separating my family from the only people on the continent that shared our blood did not improve the situation.  But rural central Florida was great for a boy like me.  Though I was not as “outdoorsy” as my older brother, I enjoyed the creek with its warm water flowing across a sandy bottom, the blue tailed skinks that dashed so quickly out of sight, the sound of the whip-or-will calling in the darkness, and the squirrels moving about the live oaks, the long limbs their highways.  I enjoyed the friendships of those in school, in church, and those that lived nearby.  Those years were an adventure.  I ‘spect I didn’t know so at the time…seriously, I might not have thought so last week.    

But occasionally we are reminded of times and people long forgotten, of events that helped to shape the people we have become.  Sometimes it takes Facebook to show us the way back and going back to appreciate better what “back” was.  Not that everything in “back” was wonderful.  We might want to forget the less than pleasant times, there were plenty, and see the past through rosy lens.  For it seems that time has a way of “sanding down” the rough patches, and that may not be a bad thing.  I am not one that believes we should live in the past.  Remembering is OK but it is in the “rearview mirror”, today is what really matters.  

However these thoughts of yesteryear show me that I have lived an adventure.  I think everyone has if they just consider it. When I think of the places I have lived, the people I have known, and the things I have done, it would be enough to fill a book…and more.  There hasn’t been anything extra ordinary in my years, like I said everyone’s life is an adventure…really.  But the best part is…that my adventure continues.  Oh, what new and unexpected experiences lie before me.  I prepare to enter a new phase of my life…and I’m excited…for I enter my retirement, whatever that means.  I am looking forward to doing new things in new ways, my story certainly is not complete.  You see…I’m living the adventure of a lifetime….

 

(589 Words)  12-29-2016