When I woke up early this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep, I lay in bed and thought about the million tasks we had to accomplish next month to get moved out of our Texas house that we recently sold out of the blue. This stream of consciousness led me down the memory lane to a post I’d written here about Second Chances two years ago.
I found it in the archives for September, 2012 and re-read it, decided it was a little over the top because I devoted so much time talking about the “epistemology” of second chances. Seriously, what was that about? Clearly no one gives a hoot or a holler about that word anymore.
For those of you who are my most loyal followers and who read the epistemology piece before I could figure out how to edit, thank you very much for indulging my big word fantasies. For those of you who just tuned in and have a burning interest in epistemology, please do take the time to visit the archives for the post.
What I intended to say is I have been extraordinarily lucky to have had second chances to reconnect with my family and friends in Texas since Pretty and I bought our home on Worsham Street in March, 2010. I’ve shared more holidays, birthdays, domino-playing days and nights, barbecue brisket, bourbon, Tex-Mex, margaritas, Lone Star First Saturdays, wine festivals, bluebonnet pastures, cookie walks, cemetery crawls, country music, front-porch rocking and visiting, bird watching and driving back country roads in the past four years than in the previous forty years. Yee haw – I even got used to wearing cowboy boots and hats again.
I also found that taking these second chances gave me new first ones, too. Living on Worsham Street in the little town of Montgomery was a slice of American life I’d lost faith in somewhere along the way. My neighbors in the 600 block of Worsham became dear friends who reminded me that community and family are not abstract concepts but people who love and support each other through it all. I find that a message of hope for our country and our world.
I’ve added Rule Number Six to the five rules I made up in that September, 2012 post: Don’t confuse your second chances with your first choices or your first choices may become your second chances.
Life is tricky, ain’t it?
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I can’t believe I published this piece ten years ago in February, 2014 which means I left Texas, friends, and family then for a second time; but some of my mixed memories from that four-year sabbatical follow me today. Regardless of the longing in my heart for the Texas of my childhood, a time and place I no longer recognize, I treasure the second chance I had to appreciate new relationships, a renewed kinship with my native land. I believe my dad would have been proud because he told me too many times “you can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the girl.”
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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