Drop Kick Me Through the Goal Posts of Life

 Last week I went to Denver International Airport to do my interview for the Global Entry TSA program. Rob enrolled me so that we could both use TSA pre-approved lanes at the airport no matter where we traveled, and we had waited a year for the appointment. The only thing I had to do was show up at the appointed time with my passport.

When I arrived at the Global Entry office in DIA there was a line of four people in front of a large locked door with no windows. A phone was mounted on the wall next to the door, as we all had to call in separately to let them know we had arrived. Tension buzzed between us, especially between the two guys who didn't have appointments. I felt a little smug that I had done everything by the book.

Those of us with appointments were buzzed into a little waiting room adjacent to where the interviews took place. We could hear all the questions and replies and I felt like a "win" was imminent. When I was summoned to the interview window I strode confidently to the green chair and sat with my purse in my lap, from which I extracted a passport.

When prompted, I handed that document to my interviewer and he stared with wide eyes for three seconds before turning it around and showing me the photo page. It wasn't my face that looked back at me, but my son's. I felt my mouth drop open, as described in novels, my heart rate jumped, and I exclaimed, "Oh, no!"

I had pulled the passport from its hiding place the night before, after we hosted a high school swim meet. The late night and the craziness of the swim meet had distracted me so that I could not even find my own face!  Fortunately the interviewer could "pass" me with the use of my driver's license, but I need to go back to the airport (a 90-minute round trip) and get my passport scanned.

When I recounted this to some friends on a walk last week, they burst out laughing. One, a friend from the South, said "Oh Lawd! Drop-kick me, Baby Jesus, through the goal posts of life!" My story forgotten in hearing this delightful phrase, she told us all about the older woman who used it in her childhood. My friend repeated it in a broad Southern accent and I made her promise to text me the phrase later.

I've made countless foolish errors over the last few weeks, some minor and some that caused serious inconvenience. It's good that humility grows in this decade of my 50's - if I made this many mistakes in my 20's I'm not sure my self-confidence would have recovered. Truth be told, it hasn't quite recovered since last week's debacle, but I now have an apt phrase to describe my stumbling through the goal posts of life.

Beautiful Mistakes

 "Life is more like a spiral than we realize" said a wise friend, when I complained about making the same mistakes over and over again. Big mistakes, not forgetting to take out trash from our upstairs bathroom but running myself ragged until my body falls apart. I wanted to ask if life always spiraled down, but backed away from the grimness of that question and decided to assume upward movement. Over time, perspective is gained even if our application of lessons learned is imperfect.

In this state of mind I welcome an email from another wise friend, whose reflection on mistakes borrowed the following from author Ellen Grace O'Brian:

"Think of an oak tree. If a tree had no obstacles or mistakes in its growth path, it would grow completely straight and tall. Everywhere we look, trees would be straight as an arrow, with every branch uniform. But instead, when we look at the oaks on the hillside, their beauty comes from their curved branches, their response to every obstacle they encountered. Every place they turned was a 'mistake' from their original growth path, but every turn ultimately became their beauty."

The comparison to an oak tree serves me better than almost anything else. I called myself a "big dumb animal" last week in a disservice to much smarter animals everywhere, but I prefer the tree analogy. It's fascinating how each individual tree grows according to specific stimuli that affect it, but still manages to be part of a forest community where each organism helps to nurture another, or others. It's a model that human communities might aspire to follow.

My good friend ended her email with this lovely poem that I share below from Antonio Machado.

Beautiful Mistakes

...and the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures...