The question comes from my very direct middle son – the same son who asked me why I felt the need to get pedicures, but that’s another story.  He asked this one day as his dad and I picked him up from work after we had attended a wedding. I should let you know that I fairly recently bought a cute little yellow VW convertible and we had the top down and the music blaring.  As he stuffed his much taller frame into the tiny back seat of the car, made easier by the fact that we had the top down, he asked the question.  “Why are you having a mid-life crisis now?”.

Well, if this was technically a mid-life crisis, my projected life span would be 114, so I’m sure he was thinking I was WAY too old to be behaving this way.  Well, maybe I am, but there are reasons leading up to some changes in my life.  Like death, for instance.

Ok, I get that death is a heavy subject, but it explains why I’m doing some of the things I’m doing.  For instance, I was asked this year by a colleague, about the same age as my  middle son, why I decided to change jobs and open a new building.  Again, a good question.  I had been at my former school for 12 years, I loved the staff and administration.  I felt fairly established.  Retirement could be just down the road.  And yet, I chose this new route.  Why?  Changing schools was HARD.  It was like going through a grieving process of sorts.  Sad, homesick, questioning my sanity, trying to find a way to go back, and then finally finding my groove again.  But I needed to experience it.

My dad passed away 10 years ago this August.  During one conversation we had before he passed, he told me he wished he had done more.  Why hadn’t he learned to ski while we lived in Colorado?  He spent many years at the end of his life sitting in his recliner, reading books and listening to music.  All very nice, but he didn’t travel, didn’t try to fulfill a bucket list and he regretted it at the end.  This made an impact.  Especially when only a handful of people attended his funeral.  He never went out, so he never met anyone new.  He was an amazing, intelligent, kind man, and very few people knew.

In the last several years, I’ve had friends, family and acquaintances who have died prematurely, some very unexpectedly.  Life is short and we all have a purpose.  When I was a senior in high school, my prom date and I were in an accident that totaled his car.  My head hit the windshield (no seatbelt – it would have wrinkled my dress) and as I flew back into my seat, it actually pulled out some of my hair.  There were tiny pieces of glass right at the crown of my head.  And all I had was a mild concussion.  The doctor said  I must have hit it just right because I should have either died or been paralyzed and I was neither.  I believe that there’s a reason why I survived, a purpose to be here, but have I done what I was meant to do?  Have I allowed fear and anxiety to keep me from doing more?  The VW is just a symbol of that stepping out and doing something that’s more than necessary, practical or expected.  It’s part of an adventure that I’m working on.  Welcome to my mid-life crisis.