Google-Mapping My Life

If there were some sort of personal satellite hovering above us, recording the paths of our lives, I suspect the images it would send back to us would be far more crosshatched than we'd have ever guessed.    Our lives are rife with crossroads, yet only a handful of those intersections tend to grab our attention.

Much like our famously underutilized brains, maybe it turns out that we only use 10 percent of our eyesight, missing most things that are right before our eyes.

For whatever reason these days, my eyes seem to be spying more intersections than usual.

Life and death, work and play, childhood and adulthood, inside and out--all these seemingly opposite things keep meeting up at the corner of Jane and Holt with surprisingly regularity, and I'm not always sure where to turn my attention.

One moment, it is on son Eric, who heads to Southeast High School Monday to learn what it means to be a teacher.  How can this even be possible, I wonder to myself, only to follow the question with another.  How could it not?

Heading down the road to the next intersection, I find myself considering daughter Allison, whose own life is rife with transitions, both physical (she moves to an apartment on Friday) and academic (she begins her new Film major in two weeks).  My reaction to both stands pretty firmly in "Yipee!"  but there are moments when I wonder if the price I pay for a more picked-up house is the yawning absence of that funny, strange spirit.

At work, my map is filled with all kinds of new roads--some more paved than others.  Navigating them, I see new faces and new job responsibilities,  as well as a formerly-favorite road now closed off to me as others begin driving down it.

Running my fingers along the larger map before me, I notice darker intersections that I'd rather pass over, ones filled with friends' cancer and death and the general decline of my parents' health.  Despite my inclinations, I click on "Street View" and try to face these with greater attention to detail.  They are, I know, the intersections that benefit from a closer view, even if I'd rather avert my eyes.

Sometimes, I feel like I've just entered Los Angeles at peak drive time, the sun in my eyes and my mind overcome by fear of the unknown.  Everything is fast and unfamiliar and just a little bit scary.  Eyes on the road, I tell myself.  And no radio or cell phone, please.  I need to concentrate.

Maybe this is why I start each day with a meandering walk through a neighborhood I know so well.  At this early-morning hour, my path is virtually absent of other  humans, and I happily roll down my proverbial window, letting in the fresh air and the monk-like whirr of cricket song.  These walks are the travels that sustain me, the ones that allow me to face the more-difficult intersections that await me, whether or not I choose to notice them.