Passport to California

Recently my granddaughter, who lives in San Francisco, asked me to help her with a school project, “Passport to California.” She selected someone, namely me, who had emigrated to California, and then asked a number of questions, gathered information and photos and made an oral presentation.

Back in 2004, I discovered the website My Publisher and created a photo book and later a DVD about my life up to that point. Lately I’ve been thinking about augmenting that legacy with a more detailed memoir of my life and times. My granddaughter’s questions stimulated my memory banks and my determination to get going on my life story.

Why would any of us do that?  I like having a permanent memoir that I could publish as a legacy to family and friends, even to sell if appropriate, and to remind myself of highlights, accomplishments, and even worries, of my life.  And I was a world-class worrier! A catastrophic thinker. 

 Yet...here I am, still walking around on the planet as I approach my eightieth birthday. The arc of my life becomes clearer.

Perhaps I have some wisdom to pass on. Or I simply want to be remembered. Or descendants may appreciate knowing more about me and the path that led to their beginnings.

For example, I tell my kids that they wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for LBJ, Lyndon B. Johnson. An act of political patronage changed the trajectory of my life. Back in my early San Francisco days, I was engaged to a naval lieutenant. When that broke up, a girl friend persuaded me to join the Foreign Service. She envisioned us living together in some exotic post.  I remember her saying in her Texas drawl, “We’ll live like queens, like queens, on our combined living allowances.”

Well, that didn’t happen. She was assigned to Athens, Greece and I was assigned to Dakar, Senegal. I really wanted to go to Europe. That was my dream. So I called my father, who managed a factory in West Virginia. One of his foremen was influential in the Democratic Party. “Can X do anything?” I asked. That was on a Friday.

On Monday I had a new assignment: Brussels, Belgium. I called my father. “Don’t do anything, I got Brussels.” To which he replied, “The call went out Friday night.”

Later I discovered, while flipping through a Rolodex in the Personnel Office,“Lyndon B. Johnson” in parentheses on my card. Apparently he was my patron. I met my husband in Brussels and the rest is history.

Writing a personal memoir can be therapeutic, even fun, as we recall and record memories from decades ago. Our writing doesn’t have to be along some rigid timeline of birth onward. We can pick those incidents and experiences that are most profound, that had the greatest impact on our life journey.  For me, a bout with breast cancer directed me toward a spiritual path, and the philosophy of Science of Mind. Thus I’m here today, writing this blog.

Ernest Holmes says, “Never limit your view of life by any past experience.” He also says, “Prepare your mind to receive the best that life has to offer.” We can use our past to see the forks in the road, the paths taken, the life changing events, even our losses, as experiences that help us to blossom and grow mentally, physically and spiritually. As he says, “You are more than you appear to be. Life is greater than you have ever known it. The best is yet to come.” 

And so it is.