Catch Me If You Can

--Sept 2002

The other day I took a friend to the airport. After a three-year tour in Europe, she was finally moving back to the United States and would be living near her family again. While we sat in a coffee shop waiting for her flight to board, I noticed something seemed to be bothering her.
When I inquired as to what was wrong, she confessed she felt a nagging regret for never having made it to the top of the Eiffel Tower during either of her two trips to Paris. To make matters worse, she had lived in Europe as a young girl and had missed the Eiffel Tower then, too. She was worried that this regret would haunt her for the rest of her life. I laughed and reminded her of all the wonderful places she had visited and teased that she was probably just secretly dreading living so close to family again. Besides, I pointed out, if she really needed to, she could always come back on vacation. She smiled weakly, admitting she had indeed seen some interesting places and that returning was a possibility. As she spoke the words, I caught a flash of doubt in her eyes. Soon after, a voice announced the boarding of her flight and we spent our last few minutes together collecting baggage and giving last minute hugs.

It wasn’t until I was back in the car that I remembered our conversation. The words "nagging regret" played over in my head. Memories of simple, missed opportunities came flooding back, and along with them, the surprising presence of those emotions associated with them: disappointment and regret. My friend was right to be worried. Was it true? Do some of life's seemingly insignificant missed opportunities stay with us indefinitely?

My own missed opportunity happened when I was only eight. It wasn't the coldest day of the year. In fact, the only signs of the previous week's snowfall were small patches of white fortunate enough to have landed just outside of the sun's reach. My father, a hard-working man, decided our family would spend "quality" time together. Long before child experts were telling us we should feel guilty for not spending a prescribed amount of time with our children, my dad had already mastered the skill of trying to cram a month's worth of parenting into a weekend. This particular weekend, Dad decided we should go sledding. We protested this idea knowing what it would entail: hours of endless searching on winding, desolate roads for the perfect sledding spot. This was not how we wanted to spend a whole Saturday. We wanted to hang out with our friends. We balked. We pleaded. We lost.

Two and a half hours later, we finally found what looked like a decent, snow-covered hill. Looks can be deceiving. This particular hill did not have enough "hill" for anything go down. The only sledding achieved there consisted of one person sitting while another ran behind pushing. Determined, Dad loaded us up again and off we went in search of whiter, steeper pastures, which, amazingly, we found after only forty-five minutes. This second spot was a seldom-used trail that veered off the road and dropped into a snowy slide--perfect, except for the occasional tree limb or small boulder. Overall, it turned out to be a good day. We were sure our friends would be jealous of our day of fun. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Upon arriving home, the first thing we noticed was the ice. And not of the lacy, beautiful, fragile variety. Instead, this was a massive one-inch coating of hardened ice. It was everywhere. Apparently, while we were out searching for a good place to sled, nature was turning our neighborhood into the world's most slippery surface ever. Our friends (and I use that term loosely) couldn't wait to tell us all about it. They had spent the entire day sledding. Marathon Sledding. Super-sonic sledding. Perfect Sledding. And we had missed it. The next morning the ice had faded away. I was heartbroken. What had I done to deserve this?

For weeks, all anyone talked about was the ice. Every conversation seemed to lead back to the ice. If someone related a story about something fun they had done, it was qualified as "but not fun as the ice." For weeks, I prayed for the ice to return. It never did. Almost thirty years have passed since then and I've moved on with my life. But occasionally, when the memory pops into my head, I still feel that same twinge of regret over having missed the "Best Day Ever."

Faced with the truth that I have never discarded this simple incident, this first encounter with regret, I had to wonder. Do others keep mental shoeboxes of minor disappointments in the back of their mind's closet? It turns out, they do.

Wendy remembers her first trip to New York City. She and three of her closest friends had planned a week of fun and touring. One particular day, she let her friends talk her into going on a bus tour instead of attending the taping of her favorite talk show. Upon returning to the hotel, she turned on the television only to discover the host of her favorite talk show had picked that day to give all the members of her audience tickets to a Broadway show (Wendy's favorite, no least!) plus the CD to go with it.

Adam recalls a class trip to Disney World. His parents had given him permission to go-on the condition that he kept his grades up and his room clean. Later, sitting on his bed in the middle of a near-disaster area, and holding a note from his teacher informing his parents of five missing homework assignments, he knew he had blown it. Despite later trips, not only to Disney World, but also to Disney Land in both California and Paris, he can't shake the feeling that he is still "the one who didn't go on the class trip."

Joan has memories of two regretful decisions made in the same year. In 1972, she and her husband were moving from Florida to an Air Force base in Germany. They had loved Florida, especially the beach. That year, on Choctawhatchee Bay, beachfront lots were selling for seventy-five hundred dollars. They discussed at length the possibility of buying one even though they were moving but finally decided against it. When they returned to the States only five years later, the very same beach lots were selling for sixty-five thousand dollars. Today, those lots with houses often sell for over one million dollars.

Her second regretful decision occurred after they arrived in Germany. Once there, she discovered a German ceramics company selling a new line of commemorative annual plates. The previous year had marked the beginning of this new line. Since they had arrived in 1972, Joan decided she would buy only the plates reflecting the years she lived in Germany. And although the previous year's plate was on sale for a mere twenty dollars, she did not purchase it. Within two years, the first edition plate was selling for ten times that much, and today, the same 1971 Goebel Hummel plate costs around $750.

What does all this mean, I wondered. There is an old prayer often quoted. It says, "Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference." We all understand how important it is to tell your children you love them, to make amends with family members, to make time for our families no matter how busy life gets. We all understand the devastation caused by waiting until it is too late; making that all-too-common mistake of assuming we have more time. Those are the big things, the life-changing things. There are people who handle this type of adversity with an inner strength that would impress a Buddhist monk. To them, missed opportunities are like direct messages from Life telling them to change their ways or direction, to do something different from what they have been doing. They use these moments as an endless fuel source for journeys of self-discovery, often having enough energy left over to create clever sayings such as "Hindsight is twenty-twenty." Their motto is "Learn from Your Mistakes."
But what about the NON-life-changing, insignificant moments like missed ice storms? What about the little things that do not scar our lives but still leave an impression? How is it that these "almosts" stay with us for so long? They must mean something. Do we file them with the other clichés as "If Only"-s or as part of the great "Cosmic Joke?" Are we to look at these snags in our fabric as testing grounds for our resilience? I don't think so.
There is something unsettling about the idea that leaving ones favorite sunglasses on the top of the car or catching the flu the on prom night may have been done "to" us. I do not want to believe Life is out there waiting for the next opportunity to teach us a lesson. That is too much like a suspense movie. Instead, I like to think we hold on to tiny tales of mishap for one reason: sympathy. These stories have the power to turn a boring conversation into a satisfying reassurance that someone cares. While they may not always evoke the desired result, the right anecdote at the right time has all the qualities of a perfectly executed trapeze act. Standing on the edge of "here goes nothing," one leaps into the air with a "You'll never guess what happened to me." Across the way, the other reaches out and makes the catch with a steady grip of an "Oh, no! You poor thing!" When it is over, the one caught has a renewed sense of security and safety, while the catcher walks away with the self-pride one gets after helping the less fortunate. It is a symbiotic relationship of the most positive kind.

I think I am going to call my friend and listen again to her regrets about the Eiffel Tower, only this time I'll be ready to catch her with a chorus of supportive phrases. Maybe I'll even tell her about an ice storm that happened thirty years ago and let her catch me. Friends do that. So, the next time you are tempted to dismiss an insignificant regret or are afraid it will haunt you forever, stop, and take a deep breath. The truth is it may be worth a few words of sympathy. Use it to your advantage and be sure to keep it close by, as you never know when the right moment will arrive to toss it in the air. In the meantime, let me practice by saying, "You poor thing!"