Dichroic Reflections

I have not chosen sufficiency

There must be an infinitude of lifelines
I could have followed,
A universe of forked choices.
Somehow, though, there's a default;
Oddly, not the one I took.
Another seems most obvious,
Now in retrospect as well as then.
I can see it more clearly than any other
Sometimes more clearly than my own. It goes:

Just well enough in high school, Then on to the state college. Choose a reasonable major, anything, Not a passion but a suffiency. Graduate and get a job (not career), Changing emplyment once a decade or so. Marry a nice enough Jewish boy, Produce the prerequisite children, And live, of course, not far from my mother, In a nice house, on a nice street, in a nice neighborhood, in a nice life.

Another brown-haired little girl I knew
Did choose that nice life.
She sleeps now two doors down the street
(It was her parents' house)
And my mother grandmothers her son,
Which gratifies everyone concerned.
As far as outside I can see
She's happy with her choices.

I think I would hate her life.

But would I?
Would there be adventure enough
In choosing the nice Jewish boy,
In raising the nice Jewish children,
In choosing the synagogue, the job,
The schools, the supermarket, the vegetables?
Have I chosen a life full
Of unnecessary challenge?

Posted by dichroic at June 22, 2004 05:03 PM