Mom, birthdays, and choices…

A favorite pic of Mom...

So today is Mom’s birthday, she would have been 82. I find it rather odd that I let myself schedule a sailing trip to start today of all days. Maybe I should have put today aside, but I didn’t. Maybe that’s part of the milestones becoming less off-putting than previous years. Or maybe there was another reason I don’t know about yet.

It’s not from forgetting her birthday or anything like that. I have been thinking about my mom quite a bit lately, and not just because it was getting close to her birthday. I found myself feeling guilty. Guilty because I had promised myself I’d write a piece about a strange or funny experience I shared with her on the anniversary of her death back in July. Much like what I did with Pop on his birthday. Though I had tons of material and memories to pick from, I found myself just not being inspired to write about any of them, as I was with Pop. Which I found both strange and frustrating.

What I did find myself doing, oddly, was replaying in my head a pivotal if not brief conversation that I had with her a long time ago. One that I now think had a strong hand in sending me in the rather unorthodox direction that I ended up going with life, for better or for worse.

I’ll set the stage:

About 20 years ago, I found myself at a crossroad. My life had not been going the way I would have liked it to the past couple years since I’d gotten out of the navy. Things hadn’t worked out the way I had hoped. My relationship with a very serious girlfriend had failed, my business had failed, and I found myself getting financially desperate and rather hopeless. Everything was bleak. No decent job prospects outside of bartending and waitering in Orlando. I was deep in debt, and had a house I could no longer afford to keep, and was teetering on the brink of foreclosure. Going back to college, which maybe I was ready to do at that time, seemed a pipe dream for me.

All I can see in my future was more struggling, mediocrity, and little hope for freedom or happiness. I needed to take drastic measures. I decided that I would put the house up for sale in order to beat foreclosure. Luckily, I found a buyer who was ready to do a quick closing. Despite the fact that I was deep in the hole with my mortgage, credit cards and badly thought out loans, I still managed to eek out a few thousand dollars profit after all was said and done.

Wow, a few grand and no obligations or commitments. A big change from my situation just a week before. When did this ever happen to me in the past? Never to be sure. I realized yet again that you could change the direction of your life with just one decision. Now, I stand with the power to change even more with the next few decisions I would make. Or, on the other hand, I would do nothing of the sort, play it safe or stupid, and things would stay the way they are. The money would get spent on pointless shit, put into a doomed business, or invested badly. Whatever the case, it would soon be gone with just a few decisions, and I’d be back at square one.

I considered my options, what should I do with this small cache of opportunity? I could go back to school, or invest it in a new business, do something to get back on my feet and prosperous again. I could and should do something logical with it. Yet, despite all the “logical” options that banged around my head, all I can really think of doing with it was none other than getting a plane ticket to somewhere new and exotic. Somewhere I can start anew, and even pursue my lifelong passions of traveling the world, and learning how to sail the seas. Things I have wanted most of my life.

I saw myself going to somewhere in the Caribbean, somewhere I can work and figure out how to get on boats. After some more pondering, the Virgin Islands were starting to make some sense to me.

After thinking long and hard about it, I decided that this was something I should pursue, and now was the time. There was also fear, anxiety, and pressure at play. On top of that, I felt like my window of opportunity to “escape” was closing on me fast. Clint, my roommate at the time the house was sold, and I had moved into a temporary apartment while looking for another place somewhere around Daytona, even possibly a house to buy and fix-up while we were living in it.

I knew that if I signed a lease, sales contract, or something like that, that I would be stuck. It would be that much harder for me to leave. Despite the fact that it would probably be unfair to my friend and roommate to bolt, I had to do it or at least attempt to do it now. Right now.

Not yet really knowing how to wrap my head around this whole concept, I consulted with my parents. I first talked to Pop. He was diplomatic and sympathetic to my talking to him about my dreams, probably for the first time ever. Despite the passion and desire he saw in me, he thought that I should at the very least use the money to get back into school somewhere in Florida. He’d always wanted me to get an MBA, and maybe this was how I can start back on that path. Besides, he had just moved back to Florida from Chicago so he can be near Nick and me. He didn’t push, but did basically tell me he thought I should stick around and keep trying to make something of myself, at whatever the cost.

A couple of days later, I called my mom, she was living in New Jersey at the time running her jewelry business. Things had been strained between us the past few months, but I still felt like I should call her about this particular matter. I told her about everything that was going on in my head. Particularly about how hard it was for me to come up with any kind of plan or scenario that would be right for me other than to just go to the Virgin Islands. She listened rather intently, which was pretty rare of her. She usually loved dominating our phone conversations with nonsense and even gossip about everybody. Usually people I didn’t give a rat’s ass about.

After I was done telling her my thoughts. She didn’t hesitate to respond. She said, “Tony, if you think you should go. You should go, just go. Vai!” I found myself a bit surprised at hearing her say this. I fully expected her to give me a speech about how I should be practical, get serious and focus on getting my life in gear and making money, and on and on ala Pop. That’s pretty much what she’d always said to me before in different ways and different conversations. This time, she just said I should go.

When I audibly sounded confused by what she said, even wondering if there was a catch, or a “but”, she took back control of the discussion. “Hey! Tony, what do you think I did? When I was about your age, I and Zia Maria both finished school to become teachers. As soon as I graduated, I just decided to leave Italy. I told everyone I was going to Brazil and teach there. Everybody thought I was crazy.” I was surprised by this, we’d never really talked about the circumstances regarding her shipping off to Brazil before.

“My mama cried for three days, Tony, begging me not to leave. My papa threatened to never talk to me again if I left. My brother and sisters made fun of me and thought I was crazy for wanting to go so far away at such a young age to a place with no family. My parents talked Zia Maria (her younger sister) into going with me so I wouldn’t be alone. They also told her to talk me into coming back while we were there. She went back in less than a year. But I didn’t. Something inside told me that I had to go. You should go too, maybe it’s your time, your destiny. You won’t know if you don’t go.”

This was quite an eye-opening revelation to me. It made things somehow make more sense. She helped make it look pretty clear that it was my time, time for me to go. Thanks to her giving me inspiration, and somehow making it “ok”, I bought that plane ticket to St. Thomas. Then I said goodbye to my family, pets, and friends. That one decision made all the difference, changed the course of everything and is probably why I’m doing what I’m doing today.

Sure, albeit a little later due to getting spontaneously married and having my plans derailed for more than a decade. . Luckily, I found my way back before it was too late.

So on this particular birthday, I just want to say how grateful I am to my mom. Who, despite everything that went wrong with her and between us over my life (and there was a lot, believe me), came through for me when I needed her to the most.