One of my very favorite bloggers, Sarah, asks a big question:

As far as I can tell, we all have those moments that we re-play in our heads and think “If I had chosen that other door, things would be so much different right now.”

What’s your big “door”? How do you think things would have changed? Better, worse, just as good but different?

Wow.  Let me remind you I am middle aged – there are a lot of doors ahead of you.  A LOT.

The comforting thing is this – I can honestly say that I don’t regret anything I have ever done in my life.   Overall, as I rewind the scenes of my existence, I am pretty happy with how things turned out and the person that those experiences formed.

That being said, there are many things I regret I did NOT do.  Some doors I passed by that I wish I had opened.  But when I look back on the times that I had my hand on the doorknob, and couldn’t bring myself to fling open the door and walk boldly through, I realize that slope of playing the “what if” game is pretty steep. 

Just for the sake of the intellectual exercise, I will give you my two biggies.  Door number one:

What if I had stayed in college back in 1984 and finished my degree like a big girl, instead of quitting for the bohemian life in the Kansas City poor starving artist district with my equally bohemian (if ultimately dissipated) boyfriend?

Likely I would be a petroleum engineer right now and rolling in cash.  That’s a nice sounding outcome, all things considered.

I would have avoided what is arguably the worst three years of my life, bar none including Katrina, and the only period of clinical depression I have ever had.  Chalk that one up as a plus.

I would probably not be as involved in the SCA, or if I still was, it would be in Ansteorra (Texas or Oklahoma).  That’s pretty neutral.  I like Ansteorra.  Fine folk there.

I would not have met all you fine peoples as a result, including either of my two hubbies.  Not such a good-sounding thing, really.  I like my friends.  They have enriched my life considerably.

I would not have had my son, Harry (bad), not had my house destroyed by Katrina (good), and as a result, you would probably not be reading this therapy-replacement of a blog (okay, you decide the merit of that one).

But here’s the deal - I may have met a different husband and had a different kid who I loved just as much (as hard to comprehend as that currently is considering my blissful domestic state).  I may have been equally happy.  I may have been completely miserable in a much nicer house.  It’s all a guessing game.

Okay, Monte, I will have door number 2 for $10K and the car, please:

What if I had my son at a more “normal” age (meaning under the age of 35), so that I might have had the chance of having more than one?

This is a biggie for me.  The only real regret of my life is that Harry will likely be an only child and I may never live to see my grandchildren.  I never dreamed I would love being a mother so much.  But let’s play the game on that one, anyway:

If I had my son under 35, it would have likely been with my first husband, which means I would almost certainly be still married to him, since he really wasn’t a bad person.  But I would also likely have been unhappy in that arrangement and I never would have met my current husband who I consider the love of my life.  That leans toward the con side.

If I had my son soon after meeting my current husband, we might have been able to produce a sibling, and that is a definite positive in my book.

However, I also would have probably not finished graduate school, and we would not have had the good insurance, income and paid leave that we had with Harry, and very likely would be deeply in debt right now.  I hate, hate, hate being in debt.  Put another tick in the negative.

If we had conceived those many years ago, Harry would not be Harry.  He would be somebody else.  And while I am certain I would love that other child just as fiercely as I do my son, the thought that his big-little personality and sunny smile would not grace this world is completely incomprehensible to me.  Call it the bird-in-hand syndrome, but I could not trade my son for five unknown children, let alone a shot at one more. 

While I do occasionally play these butterfly-effect games with myself, by and large I am more introspective than retrospective.  I am too busy deciding who I am after all these years that the thoughts about who I could have been seem almost afterthoughts, meanderings for my mind somewhere in that state between sleeping and waking, but nothing more than that.

I am too busy chasing Harry.