The Pivot

Pivot:  To turn on an exact spot.

I've been mulling over . . . well, just about everything.  I mull at great length and with great passion.  It's more fun mulling than actually doing anything.

Anyway, my trip home has me considering moments of great influence and import in my life, when things changed in a big way, a permanent, earth-shattering way, for better or worse, never to be the same ever again.

Let's take a look at these pivots or should I say PIVOTS!

1.  Leaving home for college 650 miles away.  A major pivot, a huge pivot.  Probably number two in the pivot countdown.  Let's call it the AC/DC of pivots.  I was never the same after leaving my safe, loving, conservative little Cape Cod house where I could sneak upstairs and smoke dope undetected.

2. Getting kicked out of optometry college.  Excuse me, "resigning" from optometry college, after a long, slow, inexorable slide into alcoholism.  The few governors that I had on my drinking and using were released - to the great glee of my parents - and I roared into oblivion for the next 8 years.  A total loss.  A total waste.  I can remember sitting in the dean's office - Dean Hubbard, a caricature of what you would imagine a dean to be - when he finished up his "ok, we're done here, you can go away" speech.

3.  Getting sober.  THE pivot.  The Black Sabbath of pivots.

4. Getting married to SuperK.  A monstrous pivot that was followed by 20 years of slow, steady, pleasurable growth - nurturing a relationship, advancing a career, getting soberer and soberer.  This was really more of a period than a pivot, when you think about it.  It wasn't like the other pivots which were more along the lines of stepping off a cliff where  I went from Here to There in a blink of an eye. 

5. Leaving The Old City.  Our stuff was in a truck somewhere when we boarded a plane, leaving for good.  Probably number three in Pivot Lore: the Judas Priest of pivots.  

Now, my latest trip back.  It felt different, you know?  Final.  I'm wandering if it's another big pivot.  I feel like I'm Here now and that I'm no longer There.

Hard to tell in the heat of the pivot.