My ninety-one year old grandmother recently told me she regrets never traveling to Paris. She mentioned the desire to take a trip there ten or fifteen years ago, but I didn’t realize how important it was to her. At the time I was so entrenched in my own day-to-day life that I failed to see how valuable that experience may have been for the two of us. If I could turn back the hands of time I would purchase two first class tickets and spend a week there with her. Now she is too frail to travel.
My grandmother is a feisty woman and I love to listen to her take on the world. “Everything is expensive these days,” she tells me. She wholeheartedly believes this to be true. After all when she was younger she earned a dime a day and a visit to the doctor cost her one solitary dollar. It’s amazing how much the world has changed since she was a child. I never get tired of hearing about horse drawn carriages and men who delivered milk and ice each morning. She’s convinced we are killing ourselves with prepackaged foods filled with preservatives meant to last for a decade. She told me she went to the market every day in search of fresh food to cook for dinner.
I hope to live another fifty-five years, but I wonder what the world will look like then. My grandmother’s parents didn’t own a car. How strange it must seem to her that my son can carry the entire world in his pocket via the iPhone.
I have regrets in life but most cannot be changed. I wish I hadn’t destroyed a high school friendship over a boy. I wish I had been nicer to the thirteen year old girl who was teased by all of the other students in our class. I wish I had learned empathy at a younger age and been kinder to those who were undergoing difficulties in their lives.
I wonder if my regret list will grow with time. Right now I have the health and ability to fulfill my dreams, but I know that neither of those two factors are guaranteed.