It's All How You Look At It

When I was ten years old and in for an annual school physical, a nice, attentive, Japanese doctor in Seattle (where my family lived at the time) noticed a murmur when listening to my heart.

It turned out that I had a hole about the size of a half dollar coin that was making my heart pump three times harder than normal. If nothing had been done about it, they said that I would probably not live to see my 20th birthday.

The only pediatric heart surgeon in the country in 1971, Dr. Savage, happened to be a neighbor and happened to practice in Seattle and operated on me. It cost my parents the $50/month in group health insurance that they were already paying for the family.

Had it not been for this harmonic convergence in the cosmos, here is what I would have missed:

-- graduating from college

-- being a spy in Washington D.C., my first "real" job

-- spending a year in France, where I ate well, learned a lot, and made the acquaintance of my dearest, oldest friend, Jayne

-- teaching English to so many wonderful, interesting students from around the world in Europe and the US

-- the welcoming into the world of my four, beautiful girls who are turning out to be amazing women

-- enjoying marriage to a good and loving man

-- bringing new life to an old farm and enjoying the fruits of my labors

-- coming to realize that with age comes peace, wisdom, and happiness

So, it is with absolutely no embarrassment whatsoever that I admit that I have reached the half century mark...two and a half times what I was initially allotted.

With a little luck, I may get another 50.