Pondering Life's Crossroads

Last week marked the 60th anniversary of my Irish-born family immigrating to the United States.  As I reflected on this, I found myself imagining how my four-and-a-half-year-old self felt as she was running across the tarmac of the Belfast International Airport in Northern Ireland, along with her parents and 4 siblings.  I don’t have any memories of this major event in my life - only an old black and white photo of us approaching the plane on the tarmac (I’m the leg and shadow to the left of my father) - but I’m guessing I was innocently excited to be going on such a big adventure.

Being as young as I was, I didn’t understand the reason my parents packed up five rosy-cheeked, freckle-faced Irish children under the age of nine and ventured into a country they knew little about.  Only in adulthood did I come to realize that our life-changing journey was due to my father’s search for the American Dream - believing opportunity and wealth awaited him ‘across the pond’.

What I couldn’t have known then was that this pivotal moment was changing the very trajectory of my life.  One potential story of my life was ending, and a new one was yet to be written. Ironically enough, my father’s quest for notoriety and success eluded him his entire life, but it did set into motion what would be the next 60 years of my life.

My reflections on this aren’t filled with regrets or even full-on ‘what ifs’ – instead they draw me into a place where I find myself overwhelmed with the incredible preciousness of the journey of my life.  Looking back, I am fully aware of all the junction-spaces I have found myself in – even as far back as my four-and-a-half-year-old self. 

All the intersections, every corner, and each turn, both big and small, have created what I know as my experience of sixty-four-and-a half years on this life journey.   Isn’t that an incredible thing to ponder?   It’s almost as if each of us is simply made up of a million little crossroads that, in many cases, we have no idea influence an entire new trajectory regarding where we’re going or where we might end up.

So here I am today – 60 years from a major fork in the road, and I find myself feeling grateful, and somewhat emotional, about where all these twists and turns have brought me.   I sit here today with sixty-four-and-a-half years of creating an intricate map of Zoë’s life.  Joy-filled memories, deep-lasting relationships, incredible losses, and amazing experiences all in the service of inviting me to embrace the simplicity of my younger self - running across the tarmac of my life innocently excited to be going on the next big adventure waiting for me just beyond the next horizon 💜