FORKS IN THE ROAD

ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet, knowing how way leads onto way

I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Two roads diverged in a wood

And I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference

Robert Frost

Last Wednesday while walking with my longest walking partner, John Bruce, we got onto the subject of the forks in the road that ultimately determine where we are for the next segment of our life. Often the path chosen, although initially causing those  out-of-control feelings, turns out to be the perfect choice when we look back over the decades of life.

My parents decided to leave a comfortable teaching and band directing job in Garnett and go off to the midwest. They weren't even really sure which road they would take, Ohio State or Michigan, until they had gone through Columbus and on to Ann Arbor and then back to OSU.

Leaving Ohio State to return to Oklahoma was probably an easier choice because of having family in Kansas, one state away. However, choosing to go from the University of Oklahoma to a much smaller school in the wide open spaces of New Mexico must have been a much more difficult choice.

The next fork in the road was mine, and it involved really a series of turns. When it came time to apply for college, I really wanted to go to Cal Berkely and I was admitted with honors.

 I also applied to K.U. and my parents had far fewer out-of-control feelings about me going to a college where my aunt and uncle lived and where my grandmother lived only a short distance away. What they didn't realize was that having never allowed me to have those out-of-control feelings in sufficient number had set me up to have a poor fund of knowledge regarding consequences. As a result, I had one of the most exciting years of my life, but my grades were not as exciting; and the grades guaranteed that I could not go to KU med as an out-of-state applicant and that I would have to 4 point out through the next three years of college to have any chance at any  medical school. In the end, I returned home to New Mexico, attended college where my Dad was the Dean and later Vice President, ate crow at home because of my freshman grades, and  thought that I would have a better chance at medical school entrance than was really realistic.

 

At the time New Mexico had just started a medical school in Albuquerque in 1961 and admitted their first class in 1964. So had I gone there I would have been in the third class to go through. I applied to 10 medical schools, was accepted at UNM and received eight "sorry" letters in the mail. 

I applied to Northwestern probably for two reasons: it would be back to the Big Ten and I'm sure it crossed my mind that it would get me quite a ways away from all my family and hopefully to somewhere that I could be the ultimate person in charge of my future. It was 18 degrees below zero the night that I interviewed at Northwestern, but that didn't deter my wanting to go there. My interview went really well and the dean of students  fortunately took time to listen to my story and to my strong desire to be a physician (none in my family); and maybe he thought they needed a little southwestern drawl to add diversity to the class.  I will never forget being at the ENMU library studying one snowy night, when Dad came trudging through the snow with the telegram from Northwestern. I was going to be able to take the turn in the road that I truly wanted.

The next turn was about my significant other. I went to medical school still "attached" to a New Mexico girl that I had gone with during my junior and senior years. She even came to Chicago to visit in the spring of my freshman year at NUMS. But a fork in the road arose that summer when I chose to do an elective in genetics at Children's Memorial. 

I met two Lithuanian sisters, one who was working in tissue culture and the other who was a nursing student at Loyola. The older one who worked in the lab seemed pretty "fast" for me. She was always dragging in on Monday mornings after partying all week-end at Indiana Dunes. But her sister, the nursing student had a boy friend. Regardless, the began asking me to come to the South Side to have dinner at the home (and it was amazing food for a starving medical student who was heating canned food in a popcorn  popper and eating "all you can eat" fish and chicken nights at the local hotel near the medical school). I gradually got to  know both sisters rather well and thoroughly enjoyed their family. In the fall, I wound up asking Elvyra, the eldest, to a concert by the Kingsmen at the Northwestern main campus. We had a really good time and began dating thereafter. I continue writing to my girl friend in New Mexico, but eventually realized that she wasn't the one and sent her the horrible "dear john" letter. I took the Lithuanian road and it was because of Vera that we took the turn to California rather than Denver Childrens or Seattle Childrens, where I thought I would have preferred.

The next to last turn in my life road was at the end of residency when we were torn between coming to Mission Viejo or going to Thousand Oaks. The areas are really quite similar and were at about the same stage of development in 1973. The deciding factor was probably that we had spent several week-ends in Laguna Beach at the rental home of a Riverside dentist  on the ocean side of Coast Highway just south of Laguna Royale condominiums. Some resident family would rent the place for the week and we would all drive down for Saturday and Sunday.  It was on some of those week-ends that we got a good chance to look at Mission Viejo and made the choice

.

The last turn in my road of life was to leave my original pediatric practice mid-career and for maybe the first time in my life, choose what was truly best for ME. That choice has turned out to be the second best of my life, the first having been being lucky enough to choose my loving wife, Vera.