Real
Simple magazine’s, Kristin van Ogtrop asked
in her editor’s note of
their August 2012 issue:
“Have
you ever had a conversation that changed your life?”
One immediately came to mind for me. It was a sentence said to me at the age of 15
that has haunted me all my life.
I was at my grandmother’s camp on Sebago Lake, meeting her
for the first time as a teenager.
Lettie, a relative on her Norwegian side, was visiting and staying in
one of the small cottages on the property.
I don’t even know if that’s how she spells her name and I don’t believe
we had more conversations than one, but one was enough with that woman.
My impression, formed from her sentence, said
with a rugged finger pointed at me and with squinted eyes, created her lifelong
persona for me that may or may not represent who she is entirely.
Unsolicited she said to me:
“It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor man.”
I was horrified and offended. She didn’t even know me. I was 15 and deeply in love with a kind, gorgeous boy. And I already knew that riches didn't define a person, didn't make him or her smart or compassionate or caring. I was an independent woman
with big dreams of my own. That was like
telling me the earth was flat. I thought
that the most deplorable thing to say to a strong young woman.
And then all my life, it has come back to me at various odd
times. I’ve softened in that her
intention was probably noble. I know
nothing of her life and maybe that is what she wished for herself. Perhaps she thought she was giving me sage
advice. I’m certain now her intent was
surely not to upset me.
That sentence
didn’t change me; it just deepened my own strong convictions. One sentence was the conversation that directed my life.
I’ve been married to that boy for 26 years. At the age of 50, what I know for sure is
that Lettie was wrong.
Photo: the 2010 wedding of my niece and her husband
