To See What I Might Otherwise Miss

When dreaming big leads to new discoveries.

Photo by Marc Newberry on Unsplash

The sun hadn’t appeared for weeks. My walk to the number 40 tram, the first leg of my three-part commute (tram, train, bus) to Klosterneuburg was chilling. In the eleven months of this routine, much of what I wanted to accomplish had been realized. I was uncomfortable, with a modicum of self-knowledge under my belt.

Then, it started to snow.

I had never seen a fully formed snowflake before. There was snow every winter of my childhood, but I had never actually seen a snowflake, like the cutouts made in kindergarten.

And there, in the middle of a cold, gray Austrian winter, resting on the sleeve of my green wool coat, were actual snowflakes. Resplendent in unique shapes. Each distinct from the others. Magnificent enough for me to stop and study them as they fell.

This was why I had come. To see what I might otherwise miss.

It started as a dream, born out of anxiety around the question, “what are you going to do after you graduate?” At 21, I was finishing four years “nestled in the foothills of Montecito, California;” words taken right from the school catalog. College was coming to its natural end.

As I moved through that final year, immersing myself in Rhetoric class, enjoying frigid ocean swims, and sipping smoothies on a stone wall in front of The Biltmore Hotel, I often wondered, “what happens next?” Life had followed a logical course, with each step simply following the last one until that path culminated in college. And now college was ending. Next step unknown.

So, I began to dream. I crafted visions of what going abroad could look like, with options of working or serving somewhere, and I formulated a plan. My dad, himself a world traveler with connections through his counseling in different countries, helped me put out the word that I was a soon-to-be college graduate eager to work in another country.

Bright-eyed and optimistic, I was dreaming unburdened. Vision and possibility fueled this lofty plan to intentionally disrupt my comfort zone and expand my borders.

There was also a great desire to test all I had learned academically, spiritually, and personally. If the first twenty-one years of my life had been planned and generally straightforward, I was ready to create a new road, one with curves and turns. And if advice from elders was worth heeding, my twenties were the time to do it, before life’s responsibilities tethered me in place.

I sent my letters of inquiry. I put out feelers through various organizations. I graduated and prepared for my cross-country trek home to Virginia.

I received no word from abroad.

With a diploma in hand and all my college belongings crammed into a powder blue 82’ Honda Accord, a friend and I traveled the 10 Eastbound through the South. Two weeks of freedom, without rules or phones (1994) or any idea of the future beyond the job I had waiting for me at my dad’s office.

We played cassette tapes (my collection including an album by the 10,000 Maniacs, which was mistaken for heavy metal in Texarkana by a nice guy our age who noticed the name while assisting us at the gas station) and took in the wide-open spaces.

Disoriented and continuing to grapple with “now what,” I fell in with a group of people all trying to find our footing as we acclimated to post-college life in our 20’s.

A few months after graduation, during one long afternoon, wading through filing, I picked up a call for my dad from his friend in Vienna, Austria. The man was responding to one of my inquiries and wondered if I was available to work for him.

In Austria. For a year. Dream realized. Fall, 1994.

By mid-January, most of the details arranged, housing secured, I was ready to board a plane. My vision for the year included not only expanding my horizons but also creating enough friction in my inner world to disrupt complacency, remove blind spots, test my worldview.

Ah, the grandiose dreamer.

I can still see my 22-year-old self in vivid color. Brown curly hair just above my shoulders. Peach wool sweater over tan pants. Tear-stained face as I hug my parents in Dulles airport, ready to embark on a twelve-month adventure; a year that will include me gazing in awe one cold morning at individual snowflakes falling on my coat.

Twenty-six years have passed.

Now 48, with a husband, two kids and a mortgage, boarding planes for a year is not on my calendar. But there are whispers in the back of my mind that remind me of those days so many years ago, when it seems like one chapter is ending and a new one beginning. When the question, “what next?” visits me from time to time.

The beginning and ending are more nebulous now. Not as concrete. But I find myself wondering, was that the only time to dream big? Is it too late now, with middle-age a concrete reality? Can I dream unfettered like this again?

Perhaps it’s time to make a few inquiries; open myself to new dreams.

And in dreaming, I again hope to see what I might otherwise miss.