the road not taken

as we shift from winter to summer...(if you blinked you missed spring)...and bask in the heat and humidity...(everyone on the east coast is banned from kvetching after this winter-you must schvitz in silence)...i find myself thinking of choices we make...and one's life makes for us...and i know all this is started whenever i see a graduation post or read a commencement speech...it is not a feeling of melancholy or regret but more of astonishment at the swift passage of time...i found it really hitting me as i paused for a late lunch last week at café reggio in the village...it coincidentally was nyu graduation day...and although the large ceremony now finds its home at yankee stadium, when i closed my eyes i was immediately back 33 years ago in washington square park...a hot glorious day...marching with fellow school of the arts grads...we would be dubbed tisch that day after a hefty endowment...we marched from the old building on second avenue...we were loud, brass and scared...facing a dubious employment future at best...it was tradition that our school jumped in the fountains after  being officially deemed graduates...my bestie jeannine and i had heard the violet robes ran in the water...and we had dresses on anticipating a nice lunch with our parents after...so we held back a bit...or maybe it was all the champagne we had that morning...but those graduates in the fountains...that was always the picture you would see in the daily news...exuberance...defiance...joy...and now it is 33 years later...and there i was draining an iced coffee in the presence of newly minted grads and their parents...from which nyu division really didn't matter...the ache i felt at what was...what is...and what will be...it reminded me that it does the creative soul a little good every once in a while to walk those old familiar steps again...take in all that has changed...and cherish what's remained...and to never second guess what roads you have taken or passed by...it's the detours that define who we are...