Postscript
As I look back, 29 years later, I am astounded by the entire story. For many years I have been proud of the effort and discipline it took to cycle across the country. But the ending, the miracles for both Inanna and I, overshadow the trip itself. The miracles lead to many things.
Inanna left that December, 3 months after we had returned from the adventure. We still couldn’t be with other people. She would be deeply hurt if I spoke with anybody else. I tried to include her but always failed. I had to choose to be with her alone, or to have her depressed and accusing. As a result, I stayed away from my friends. I felt more and more stifled. When we were invited to a party given by my friend Alene, Inanna refused to go. When I said I would go without her, she said she would be gone when I returned. I left at 8, and when I returned at about midnight, she was gone. She had had her brother come over, and he helped her take her things out of the house. She took only what was hers, and that wasn’t much. She still traveled light. There was a dent in the banister, evidently from moving, and that dent was the only evidence that she had ever been there.
That next August, as I began the second year of grad school, I met Mary. Her smiling eyes shown out at me from a crowd of first-year students. I tutored her in statistics, and soon we were dating. We married two years after Inanna had left. Mary struggled with being a step-mom and we began to grow through it. In 1983 we had our first baby, Lindsey, and in ‘86 our second, Shannon. Now Cathy is a college graduate, married, and living in northern California, and pregnant with my first grandchild. Lindsey is in graduate school, and Shannon is a junior in college. I am proud of them all, especially Mary. We’ve now been married 27 years.
I received my Master of Social Work in 1979 and was hired as Executive Director of a small Catholic Family Services agency. I gave my heart and soul to that agency for seven years. I then spent 12 years in the private practice of psychotherapy. After that, I spent four years as an executive in two large managed mental healthcare companies. Then came a great setback: I was laid off by the second managed care company. For a few days I was in shock, in denial, applying for jobs that were hardly worthy of my experience and skills. But when the smoke cleared, and in less than a month, I was managing children’s services for the mental health center in Virginia Beach. I had come full circle, I was once again a city employee, as I was when I worked at the Outreach Center before I quit in 1977.
This full circle is itself amazing. There is still, in me, that same belief in the mission, in the almost sacred mission of helping those without resources to cope with the struggles of mental illness in the family. And there is also that frustrating reality that the system could be so much better—and if it were that we could be so much more effective in fulfilling our mission.
Recently a fellow employee received a plaque for her 25 years of service, and she seemed to complain about having been in one place for so long. I replied that if I had stayed, I would be almost at 30 years service, and would have a nice retirement by now. But instead, it is almost like I am starting over. Dare a person start over at the age of 56? Dare a person not start over at this age? Is there a choice? I am excited that I could actually have another chance—to be reborn after being laid low.
But what difference did the bicycle trip make? Certainly I cannot claim to be a great mover and shaker because of it; I wasn’t provided great wisdom or great leadership abilities by the experience. I am not seen as a leader of my minor profession, even in my little corner of America.
Or maybe there was a certain type of wisdom picked up. I can honestly say that I have enjoyed all my social work jobs, at least until the four years in managed care. Until that time I not only enjoyed myself, but I was doing things I believed in. And in managed care, I learned many things I am now applying on a daily basis: computer skills, an entrepreneurial spirit (rare in public service), how to deal with superiors, how to not take it personally when I lose a bureaucratic battle or get criticized by a boss.
What would things have been like if I had stayed in the Virginia Beach Drug Outreach Center in 1977, and skipped the bicycle trip? What would I have been like? Some things would certainly have happened: the Outreach center would have been closed, as it eventually was, and I would have had a choice to facilitate the change or go down with the ship. Had I assisted in the planning for the future after Outreach, I would have wound up in some supervisory job in the comprehensive drug program or the mental health program. Then I may have become a seat-warmer, a bored and cynical bureaucrat looking forward to retirement. Or maybe I would have made sure I got to graduate school, joined a profession, rejuvenated my altruistic instincts, and maybe even met Mary after all. It is all speculation. It is the road not taken.
In the end, all I can say about the journey is that I have benefited from each step, and enjoyed it immensely. Perhaps that is all I can expect.
Everything that has happened in the past 29 years sprang directly from the miracle of the bicycle trip. It’s as if I had to cast my fate to the wind, leaving everything behind, trusting that everything would be OK. I had to release the trapeze without checking first to see if there was a net.
And who knows what’s next?
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This is the end of this blog! Wow, finally, I can leave this space to someone else.