|
Fifty-four years ago, in a small jewelry store tucked away amidst the tumbleweeds of Limon, Colorado, a dirt-small town on the eastern plains of Colorado, hunched a man over his engraver.
Through his magnified glasses he focused on the small, circular gold-colored metal before him. On one side, he engraved this in all caps:
DOUGLAS
On the other side this:
7-9-58
A few days later, a twenty-eight year old rancher's wife dropped a few dollars on the counter, slipped the gold-colored metal in her purse and walked out. Later, she added it, another charm, to what was becoming a crowded bracelet.
Six charms were already dangling there; the names John, Katherine, John, Kenneth, Mary and Peter. I am, of course, that DOUGLAS; the others my four older cousins and my older brother and sister.
Aunt Mary was twenty-eight years old...boggles the mind. I see her toying with the charm...attaching it carefully to her bracelet...adding it to the others. Maybe she wondered what would become of DOUGLAS...what I would amount to...I was but days old.
I knew nothing of this bracelet until two Saturdays ago...the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend.
Aunt Mary was eighty-two years old when she died in early May. Family flew to Colorado from all over the country to share a happy moment remembering her...her wonderful charm, her deft sense of humor, the twinkle in her eye.
Saturday ended with a family party-Aunt Mary wouldn't have had it any other way. As the party wound down, I was climbing into my uncle's rental car, but was stopped by my cousin Kathie and my cousin Chet's wife, Kathy.
Into my hand they squeezed an envelope, a tear rising in Kathie's eye. In the envelope was a small zip-lock baggie and in the baggie this charm that had hung on Aunt Mary's bracelet for fifty-four years. My cousins wanted each of us to have the one engraved with our name.
I've been staring at it ever since. It lies on the desk before me as I write this.
Indeed, what has become of DOUGLAS during all these years? Am I at all what Aunt Mary expected, or my parents? Did my life follow an anticipated trajectory? Looking over it, I think not. Actually, it's been kind of odd I think. That can be good or bad, I guess.
But as I stare at the charm, play with it between my fingers, wonder over it as if it would speak to me...I come to a more relevant question.
If I were to wander down to the local jeweler and pick out a similar charm, engrave my name on it with maybe 7-9-13 on the other side, and if I hid it away and pulled it out twenty-eight years hence, when I am Aunt Mary's final age...what trajectory would I find then?
For the real question is not what we've done or haven't done. The much more significant question is what we will do.
What will DOUGLAS become? And, what will he amount to? These are still open questions.
And that's a good thing, I think.
So many pages yet blank, so many paths without my footprints, and, if I have done anything, I hope I haven't done my greatest thing yet.
Life as a gradual slow down depresses me. Scary but breathless is the life that continues to pick up speed.
And so when I look upon my charm, the charm that my Aunt Mary so thoughtfully carved and kept, it'll not be for me a query of the past, but a portal to the future.
What will I yet become? What will I yet amount to?
Fifty-four is way too young to answer those questions. | 
