Road Map

When I first read about roads diverging in woods, I intuitively craved ones less traveled by. After all, by the time I read Robert Frost’s poem in high school in Connecticut, I had already hit my first roadblock.

I had wanted to be an artist, but my mother quashed that path.

“You can’t be an artist,” she said. A depression baby, she was forever practical. “Be a teacher. Then, if you want, you can be an artist.”

Since I liked biology, I figured I’d teach it. Until I took nine credits in science during my first semester in college. Wrong way. I got in the recently paved right lane. Destination English.

After five years of teaching that, however, I realized I loved language, but not teaching. During that time, I developed a love for black-and-white photography. I studied it in dark rooms and bright shores. On city streets and country lanes. On planes that soared, in boats with oars. For one assignment, I shot a stop sign. It became a fork in the road that led to a master’s degree in graphic arts technology.

See, Mom, I can be an artist.

With a lithographed atlas in hand, I headed to Colorado. Rocky mountain trails, wildflower-tinged footpaths, and rocky streambeds fueled my spirits, but not my wallet. The graphic artery was a pot-holed misnomer. Although I did land a job as a typesetter, that road disappeared when the job title did. The experience, however, dropped me at the intersection of advertising and public relations—scenic boulevards, but dead ends nonetheless.

Back in Connecticut, I ran a for-profit learning center. It was a roundabout that brought me to an earlier road not taken—education. As a consultant and not a teacher, though, I didn’t have to work much with kids. Turns out, teachers and parents were just as bad. But it was a niche avenue that I followed down the road. Way down the road. Way down yonder to New Orleans.

With much more to do than teach and consult, I learned and absorbed. For 18 years, I trekked to and through antebellum plantations, bluesy jazz clubs, and gator-infested byways; cooked mirlitons and etouffee; sipped Sazerac and café au lait; and hurrahed, Laissez les bons temps rouler! on Mardi Gras and JazzFest days. Until Katrina came and washed out that roadway.

As middle-aged professionals in a flooded economy, my husband and I followed the money on the superhighway to Washington, D.C. In that concrete labyrinth, I found a job editing electrical standards. Truth be told, I didn’t know an electrical standard from a beauty standard, but that temp job was the on-ramp to a 14-year career publishing a trade magazine for a major association. Detours abounded on cobblestone and terraced pikes—museums, lyceums, military mausoleums, black-tie receptions and classes in extrasensory perception—all in a capital fashion.

Worn thin, that pavement crumbled, and a less hectic parkway beckoned. Trading the Metro subway for the Sunshine Highway, my husband and I took the road more traveled to Florida. Amidst roseate spoonbills and snowy egrets, I have no regrets. For now, I practice the art and craft of writing about all those roads not taken.

And that has made all the difference.