Perspective

It is funny how memory works - it can be years and years before a special memory surfaces for one reason or another.

That happened to me yesterday.   I remembered an incident that happened in the late 1990's that changed me forever.

My dad was in the intermediate stages of Alzheimer's Disease at the time.  He still had plenty of good days, but my mom was very careful about where he went and how far afield they went alone.

A colleague of my father's was retiring after a forty year career.  Dad had retired in 1989 after thirty-eight years, so there had been significant overlap in their career timelines.  Dad really wanted to go to the retirement party, but it was in Lower Manhattan, and Mom was nervous about taking Dad into New York City on her own.

My husband and I had been planning to go up to New Jersey to visit, so I timed the visit so that we could take Mom and Dad into the city, drop them off at the party, and then pick them up and bring them home.

We decided the easiest way to go would be to drive over to Staten Island, take the ferry to New York City, walk to the event venue, and then reverse the order to get back home.

We made it over to Manhattan with very few bobbles, only having to ask one policeman for directions to ferry parking.  It was when we got in the car to go home that things went awry.

It started to snow almost as soon as we got in the car.   My night vision was way better back then, but not that good, and with the snow, you can just call me Mr. Magoo.  Consequently, I got lost on Staten Island, trying to find Route 440.

Staten Island is really pretty nice, but it does have some sketchy neighborhoods, and of course, those are the ones you always get lost in.  It took us almost an hour of wandering before I found our way onto the highway.

Dad was a nervous wreck in the backseat, and I was a nervous wreck driving.  As soon as we got home, I poured me and Mom a glass of wine each, and my husband opened a beer.  Dad settled for a cup of tea.

My sister and brother-in-law were living in the Pocono's in Pennsylvania at the time, and my brother-in-law had worked very late.  When this happened, he would just stay at Mom and Dad's.  So at about 11 pm, the front door opened and my brother-in-law came in.

He immediately asked how the retirement party was.  My dad told him what a great party it was, and how much he had enjoyed seeing everyone, and then told the story of the drive home.

Only, when the story got told, it wasn't a scary anxious event, it was a comedy.   I had tears rolling down my face from laughter as Dad told the ride home story.  And I learned something important about my Dad, and it changed me too.

I had grown up listening to my father's stories.  And they were always heartwarming, and usually funny.  This was the first time I experienced a story first hand that was so very different in the retelling.  And I realized something important.  We have the power to tell our stories any way we want to.  And if we retell the story in a way that makes it better than it was, the memory of the event changes tone as well.

I'm not so naive as to believe that all stories can be retold into comedies.  Bad things happen that can't be fixed in the retelling.  But so much of what we call bad experiences are just things that didn't go as well as they could, with no lasting negative implications.

So I started to practice retelling my stories.  I learned that if an event would be funny in a movie or on TV, it was funny if it happened to me too.  I got better and better at seeing the light in life, and while the dark is always there, I can choose the light when I tell my stories.

I have become a happier person from changing my perspective.   And all because my Dad taught me how to tell my stories from a brighter point of view.