My parents had their 55th wedding anniversary this week. Fifty-five years. Dad took Mom to Applebee’s. You may laugh, but it’s what she wanted and she was happy. Just the two of them – eating steak and ribs. Classy. My memory fails me now, but I think their first date was also steak and ribs. Or maybe that’s when he proposed. Anyway. Fifty. Five. Years. If my wife and I can make it that long, I will be 89 years old. We got a late start.
But our one-year anniversary of moving to Utah was this summer. I meant to write about it but lapsed. Fittingly, I closed my first professional theatre show in SLC on the date. That felt good to think that I was able to accomplish some goals in less than one year – especially when I thought it would take at least five to get myself established here. In many ways, that’s still what I’m doing – meeting, networking, working hard, auditioning and just trying to push that stone back up the mountain. I’d worked so hard in Chicago to get to where I was and didn’t realize how much I was giving up when we left.
But let me be clear – I am glad we moved. Yes, yes, I will always miss and love Chicago, the city of my heart. But I’m glad we moved. It was the right choice. It was the adventurous choice. And even though I’m farther from Nebraska, being closer to Washington – being in the almost exact middle of our two families – was a great move.
Still – I’m in that strange middle/gray area of post-move life. I know my way around the city and enough of its history and local flavor to feel like I really live here. But I still feel like an outsider – still feel like the “new guy”. And still very uncertain how, or where I fit in. There is profound sense of loss of purpose, something that was so clear to me back my city. But I suppose I will do what I always do – just keep working hard and something amazing will happen, eventually.
Eighteen years in Iowa. Five years in Nebraska. Six years in Florida. Thirteen years in Chicago. How many will I last here until I get bored and ready to move on again? And why I am the only one (it seems) in my immediate family who could never settle down in one place? Only now do I see the advantages of staying put. But that never would have made me happy, deep down. I’m a wanderer, for better or worse.
Fifty-five years of marriage. God bless them.