Reboot Your Life Read online

  “If you keep practicing, there is no telling how far your talent will take you,” I said as I pulled the covers up to his chin.

  Ten years after that conversation, David called me from his college dorm room late one night. We talked about his freshman classes, his desire to study journalism, and his hope to someday become a writer. And we talked about football.

  “Pops, do you remember when we used to play football in the back yard?” he asked out of the blue.

  “I sure do.”

  “Do you remember how badly I wanted to be like Joe Montana?” he said with a laugh.

  “I remember.”

  “Do you remember how important it was for me to play football in the NFL?”

  “Yeah. How could I forget?”

  Then there was a long pause and I wondered where the conversation would go. The next words out his mouth were magical.

  “Dad, if I could choose only one or the other, I would rather have played football in the back yard with you all those years than to play in the NFL.”

  This conversation is permanently etched in my heart.

  In football there is a statistic called time of possession. The team that possesses the ball the longest has the best chance to win. Looking back, I realize by choosing to freelance, I won something in this game called life; time of possession with my sons.

  ~James C. Magruder

  Happiness Is a Big Loud Garbage Truck

  Children make you want to start life over.

  ~Muhammad Ali

  Given a choice between spending time with a kid or a grown-up, I’ll take the child every time. Children are more interesting than adults. They’ll tell you exactly what they’re thinking. The world still fascinates them, and it’s still full of magic. And children are full of surprises. You never know what a three-year-old will say next.

  I’m particularly mad about babies. If I hold a baby for ten minutes, I’m high for the rest of the day. I’m the rare person on the airplane who hopes the exhausted single mom struggling down the aisle with the fretful infant in her arms is going to sit next to me.

  When my own son was born, twenty-four years ago, I left the practice of law to stay home with him. Although trading legal briefs for bath toys wouldn’t work for every thirty-four-year-old professional, I was exactly where I wanted to be, on the floor, singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” to my kid.

  “You may not be getting quality time,” I often told him as I hunkered down beside him in the sandbox, “but God knows you’re getting quantity time.”

  The sad truth about motherhood, though, is that if you do your job well, and raise a happy, secure and confident individual — you put yourself out of a job.

  At fifteen, Tom no longer needed active mothering. Now he needed space and independence. I had to let go. And I did. But it hurt!

  I was proud of my accomplished, confident teenager. But I missed the little boy who had wanted nothing more than to read books, paint pictures, make his stuffed animals come to life and explore the neighborhood with me.

  I could have returned to the practice of law. But I’m really good with kids. And I realized that I needed them in my life. So I did something unusual for a fifty-year-old woman with a law degree.

  I started babysitting.

  I took at part-time job at my local library and put up a notice: “Wise, fun, mature library worker, great with kids, seeks occasional babysitting in your home.”

  I was a little nervous on my first job. I hadn’t taken care of a toddler in over a decade. But I needn’t have worried. Moments after meeting happy, bright-eyed Olivia, we were building towers with her blocks, acting out goofy stories with her stuffed bears and reading board books.

  I was back where I belonged. On the floor, with a child.

  In the decade since, I’ve cared for dozens of neighborhood kids. I only have two rules. I won’t drive. And I don’t watch TV.

  I’ll often find a new charge in front of the screen, expecting that I’ll spend the next few hours watching along.

  “It’s beautiful outside,” I’ll suggest. “Let’s go for a walk and explore.”

  That’s usually all it takes. But if not, I don’t give up.

  “Want to read a story?” I’ll ask. “Play hide and seek?”

  The Disney Channel can be very compelling. But I persist.

  “Let’s walk the dog. You haven’t got a dog? Let’s borrow a neighbor’s dog and take him for a walk.”

  There isn’t a kid who wouldn’t rather play than watch television. Cable is great, but I’m from a generation that went out to play, roaming the neighborhood until it was too dark to see.

  I take care of twenty-first century kids as if it’s still the fifties.

  Milo, formerly addicted to Elmo, now adores the playground. Zoey makes up songs on the piano for her sister (and their hamster) to dance to. Sam writes picture books to sell to his parents when they get home.

  One of the best times I’ve ever had was a morning I spent with two-year-old Suzi, a little girl who is fascinated by heavy machinery, following a compellingly noisy garbage truck around the neighborhood. She was totally blissed out.

  I, too, was perfectly contented.

  “It doesn’t get better than this,” I said to her.

  Babysitting is so cool that I often wonder why more empty nesters don’t try it.

  I’ve taken care of five-year-old Hanina every week since he was a baby. I’m such an integral part of his life that, for a while, he insisted I was actually a member of his family. (A pretty neat trick, given that he’s an Orthodox Jew and I’m an atheist.)

  “You love Roz,” his folks told him. “And she loves you too. But she’s not family.”

  “Yes she is,” he insisted.

  So he asked me. “We’re family, aren’t we?”

  “You can’t choose your family,” I told him. “But you can choose your friends.”

  “I choose you!” he said.

  None of my legal clients ever felt like that about me.

  I look forward to caring for Hanina as he grows, to attending his Bar Mitzvah, and to dancing at his wedding as joyfully as I recently danced at my own son’s wedding.

  When Hanina is too old to need a babysitter, letting go will be hard.

  But by then there could be grandchildren.

  ~Roz Warren

  Movie Critic, MD

  Chase down your passion like it’s the last bus of the night.

  ~Terri Guillemets

  “I quit.” Those were words I never expected to hear coming from my mouth. I had been raised to persevere in even the direst of situations, but those two little words led me to a new job in a new city with a new home and new patients. I am a family physician, and I had developed the courage to leave a medical practice I felt had stifled my growth as a clinician. I had started over but soon learned I hadn’t started over far enough away.

  Sitting in my new office during a lunch break, I sighed at the mountain of paper charts sitting on my desk. I had a tendency to skip lunch to tackle all that chart documentation, but something told me to grab a ham sandwich and give my brain a break with a lighthearted Internet search. What I soon discovered made me giddy as a schoolgirl. After a few phone calls, I scampered into the front office and found several pairs of receptionist eyes looking up at me.

  “I need to take some time off next week,” I said. “Can someone help me adjust my patient schedule?”

  Loraine, a receptionist and dear friend, answered, “Sure thing, doc. Anything going on you want to share?” It may have been my happy feet dance that gave me away.

  “I am going to go to the movies.”

  A small giggle escaped the lips of the other staff. “You are going to take time off from work to go to the movies?”

  “More than that, I am going to go to a film set in Wisconsin to meet Johnny Depp.”

  That certainly drew some attention as questions swirled around the room. How did I know about a film shoot? Did I know if the actor would actually be there? How could I know it was not an Internet hoax? Of course, I had answers for all of them. I had confirmed the film shoot with the local Visitor Center in Columbus.

  Then came the speculative looks that told me I lost my mind to fly across the country to do such a thing. After all, I was a professional and professionals are serious people; they do proper things and do not pursue obscure adventures. That was what I had always told myself but something shifted in me that day. I had quit a position that made me unhappy, had made all these life adjustments by moving and changing jobs, but I still had not found a way to find that life balance. The stack of papers on my desk told me so.

  For me, movies had always been essential escapism. The silver screen could erase every worry and transport me into other worlds for hours at a time. I had dreamed of being a film critic, a female Roger Ebert, since high school and the opportunity to see that magic in action was far too tempting.

  But Loraine understood. She smiled a toothy grin and gave me a pat on the back. It seemed she understood that life need not come burdened with conventional trappings.

  I completed my chart documentation that day with verve.

  A week later, I found myself on a plane to Chicago followed by a three-hour drive in a rental car to Wisconsin. My first stop was the Visitor Center.

  “I can’t believe you came!” Visitor Center director Kim Bates and I had conversed on the phone several times over the past week. We hugged as if we were long lost friends.

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “You must be a big fan then.”

  I had been a fan of the actor since my high school days, but it was difficult to explain that this trip meant far more than that. I had always done what others expected of me. It was time to step out o
f that box into what made me happy. Now that I had the means to explore those options it seemed a shame to let it go.

  Sadly, the film shoot with Johnny Depp was canceled at the last minute but I did get to watch Christian Bale shoot a scene with Billy Crudup for Michael Mann’s Public Enemies at the Capitol building in Madison. I also got to tour the downtown Columbus sets and visit a home that had been transformed into a 1930’s brothel. My wildest dreams of becoming one with the silver screen had come true.

  I went home with an exciting story though I was missing the icing on my fantasy cake. I topped it off a week later when my new Wisconsin friends notified me that Johnny Depp had arrived in town to complete his part of the film shoot. Some would say I was a stalker to hop back on that plane, and I still get picked on to this day, but in my mind what I did was round out the experience.

  Columbus was just as I left it, a movie wonderland. As I waited in a crowd that night near the Universal Studios set, a woman whispered, “Did you hear a woman was coming all the way from Connecticut?”

  A little embarrassed that I had become a quirky topic of discussion, I answered, “That’s me.”

  A teacher, a hospice nurse, a high school student, they all took me in that night with open arms, and I felt accepted by people who simply yearned for adventure just as I did. No professional roles or social expectations could stymy our enthusiasm. And at four o’clock that morning, Midwestern charm was reciprocated by the bohemian swagger of a famous actor. My heart palpitated when Johnny Depp put his arms around me in a big bear hug. The moment lasted minutes but would be a source of major change in my life.

  “Thanks, Johnny.”

  Back home, central Connecticut regaled my tale through gossip that spreads as it always does through small towns. The patients loved it! In fact, the story had such impact that the town newspaper printed a story on my travels and offered me a position as a film critic that soon expanded to my writing for six local newspapers. I could not believe my good fortune.

  A year later, that fortune expanded to the red carpet. Though there were naysayers who told me that my review column was too small or that I had not made enough of a name for myself, my Columbus adventures taught me to always expect more, to keep dreaming. I applied for press credentials to the Los Angeles Film Festival, eager to see the Hollywood premiere of Public Enemies. I dashed out of my medical office panting with excitement that I had made it to the big time. “LA just called. I am in!”

  A whoop went up through the medical staff and Loraine nodded her approval. Unlike some who stifled others with societal expectations, she knew that you can be whatever you want to be. With her support, my childhood dreams had come to fruition and I could give myself the not so official title of movie doctor.

  I completed my chart documentation that day in nirvana.

  And yes, the red carpet was amazing.

  I learned back then that quitting isn’t always quitting. Sometimes it is starting over. By listening to my inner voice, quitting led me to my biggest win, a balanced life doing all the things I loved.

  ~Tanya Feke, MD

  Becoming Real

  Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.

  ~James Dean

  I met Jill in her last month of pregnancy. The incredible irony of meeting her was not lost on me. I was a woman who had tried desperately for years to carry offspring of my own and whose arms were still agonizingly empty.

  Jill had recently become single and this would be her third child. She was in need of friendship and support, and would need it even more when this new little one would enter the world.

  I rejoiced in the birth of Jill’s baby girl and walked through life beside her. A couple of years went by, and our friendship blossomed. We were kindred spirits. Jill and her children spent Thanksgiving with my husband and me. Her little family participated in fundraisers to help us inch closer to our dream of adopting an infant.

  When our baby finally arrived, Jill gave us the book The Velveteen Rabbit and later attended our daughter’s first birthday party.

  Less than a month later, Jill was dead. Three children lost their mother. I lost a friend.

  Nobody saw it coming. Jill experienced a massive seizure while driving. It was a miracle that her vehicle did not hit anyone and that no one else was injured. As her young children kept vigil at her bedside, Jill was kept alive by machines. We soon learned that she would never wake up.

  After a few days, the social workers took plaster forms of Jill’s hands, preserving her fingerprints. They took photos, too, preparing the children for the inevitable time when they would need to say goodbye to their mama.

  Removing life support from a loved one is horrific for an adult, unimaginable for a child. As a friend helplessly watching from the sidelines, it was unbearable.

  And yet this extreme and heart-wrenching time jolted me into a new perspective on my own life. I had always lived for “someday” or for “when we have kids.” I had not been truly living in the present. Through the painful lens of what I had just experienced, I realized that what I have right now is all I am going to get. I will only live this moment one time. I don’t get to do it over again. Life is fragile and fleeting; I am not guaranteed another day.

  I also realized that I had lived the majority of my life for other people and according to their expectations. I was operating out of fear. Fear of failing, of letting people down, of disappointing them.

  I was participating in activities and serving on committees that I didn’t even enjoy being a part of, because I felt intense pressure to be the person others wanted me to be.

  The film of my life was playing in front of my own eyes and I didn’t even recognize the woman in those scenes! Who was I?

  I began making changes — difficult but positive changes that enabled me to pursue the things I wanted to do, that allowed me to serve causes that I truly felt were utilizing my strengths as well as challenging my weaknesses.

  Now, when individuals extend an invitation, I ask myself a few questions…

  1. Is this something I want to do? Is this a way I want to spend my time?

  2. Would it be appropriate for me/my family to attend? Does the activity line up with our family goals and mission?

  3. Does it reflect the values we wish to own — not just portray? Is this something we are passionate about? Is it the best use of our time? opportunity?

  It took some deep inner reflection to figure out exactly who I was, what I wanted in life, and how I felt I could best serve. I had to nail down my various roles in life (wife, mom, coordinator, employee, writer) and prioritize those accordingly. I then reflected on my legacy — how I wanted to be remembered in each of those chosen roles. I then decided on what I wanted to personally invest in — which relationships, roles, and responsibilities.

  Once I had this all mapped out, it was so much easier to know where to focus my time and energy. It is a wonderful thing to truly experience freedom. Knowing who I am and what I stand for is a powerful tool.

  I now agree with the wisdom of the nursery toys in The Velveteen Rabbit: “Real doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

  ~Amy L. Stout

  A New Operating System

  A desire to be in charge of our own lives, a need for control, is born in each of us. It is essential to our mental health, and our success, that we take control.

  ~Robert F. Bennett

  “Meeting at nine,” Joel said without looking up. As I walked to my desk at my secure major software company job, the office was buzzing. I meandered over to my best buddy Joel’s desk to quiz him. Was he being sarcastic this morning?

  The moment I met Joel, I liked him. He was smart and funny and he was taller than I was. I had to look up to him no matter what, and when I did I always got a big smile. My task was to train him for the position I’d vacated a year earlier. Now I hid in a division that no one cared about. I knew Joel was not long for the job, though he was smart. His ideas were outside the box. He took great pride in challenging management and he was confident. My kind of guy.