Robert Frost and the Prima Donna

I volunteered to work at a fund raiser auction, and two half days this week I helped put together gift baskets full of donated goods which will be auctioned off. (An additional volunteer day will come on Friday to help move items from storage to the silent auction and live auction sites.) This was my second year helping on the basket project but I don’t think there will be a third. I discovered I have a low tolerance for making creative decisions by committee. My fellow volunteers were lovely people but I spent twenty years of my work life designing bouquets and backdrops for weddings, holidays and elegant parties. I have a degree in art and a great sense of scale, balance and color and it drove me crazy that every basket and cellophane bag size and every tissue paper filler and ribbon color decision we made had to be a collaboration. Lest you think I was being an artsy fartsy prima donna, I wasn’t. I wore my go-along-to-get-along persona. I oohed and awed in all the right places, knowing I could have done the work in half the time if left to my own devices or if we’d done the baskets assembly line style like we did last year. More than a few times I had to listen to my mother’s voice in my head saying, “If that’s the worst thing you’ve got to complain about, you’ve got it pretty good.” She was a smart lady.

Ohmygod! Now that I think about it maybe I really was an artsy fartsy prima donna if I had to give myself that Mother Lecture! Ooookay, I'll have to think on that some more but if I was being an in-the-closet artsy fartsy prima donna at least on the outside I was the Queen of Go-Along-to-Get-Along Land where I’ve resided most of my life. No wonder I don’t have many friends. I’m so fake and phony I’m surprised I don’t get arrested for impersonating a human being. Robot Lady says what ever you want to hear if her tactful little hints don't work the first time out.

Changing Topics: When a shirt-tail friend found out I’m taking a class on metaphors, she remarked, “I think it’s great that you’re taking up writing at this late date in your life.” I didn’t know how to response to that so I lamely replied, “Me, too.” I felt like an old dog being petted and praised for learning a ‘new trick’ that I’d actually known how to do all along. Though the ‘Fun with Metaphors’ Olli class is writing related, it’s so much more. This week’s class was a series of quality conversations and my classmates have a rich collection of life experiences to share. Sometimes I feel like a chimney sweep when they get to talking about their world travels. Ya, l’ve been to those tiered rice fields in the Orient---in my head. I’ve seen the Heidelberg Castle in Germany---in an International Geographic Magazine. Africa? Isn’t that the place where the elephants have their own mud spas?  Our class time went by too quickly as we talked about common metaphors like “it takes a village” “America is a melting pot” “life is a box of chocolates" and “life is a journey.” Tons of interesting topics came to the surface as the professor asked questions like, “Is there truth in the metaphor for you? Why or why not.” We ever talked politics which pleased me right down to my toenails that need a manicure soon or my shoes will no longer fit.

We also spent time in class discussing Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken and the professor made a comment about how different our observations were from when she teaches that poem to high school students. She laughed when she told about a student who read the poem in her high school graduation speech. I remember studying The Road Not Taken way back in my teens and now as an adult I don’t see how anyone that young could truly understand what Frost was saying. It’s not a credo for nonconformists as so often the poem is presented. It’s far more ambiguous than that. Who knew…except for the bunch of adults who just took part in a metaphors class? ©

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.