It’s six years ago.  I have six and three year old sons.   My days are long, filled with trips to the park, rushed dinners, runny noses, my work at the college, and a nagging feeling I am missing something.  It is always there, like the throbbing of an invisible heart beat.  Some days it makes me hungry for something I have never tasted, other days it makes me look with longing at the cars driving down my street. At times I can’t shake it, while in other moments the rushes of diapers and emails push it down and away.  The particulars of this day are lost in the sea of forgotten moments. But several rare things happen as twilight slips to darkness.  Mike goes to bed first, I am left with a TV remote, and I am awake.  A lovely young woman catches my eye.  She is cutting vegetables picked up that morning from the farmer’s market with deliberate care. She slices and arranges the colors in a breathtaking display of freshness, aroma, and simplicity.  My mouth is watering with appetite, but with a flash of insight I realize it is not the lasagna creation but her lifestyle that is calling my name.

The show is called Getting Fresh with Sara Snow.  There is a quick segment on Sara’s family.  Her father is the founder of Eden Organic Foods.  She describes her family dinner table as a destination, a place where she was taught to value produce and  others.  The show ends with a smiling Sara dumping leftovers into her compost pile with the help of her handsome new husband.  I will never watch another show, I will not spend any time researching Sara on the internet, in fact later tonight I will have to google her name to make sure I am spelling it right…but I will never forget that moment.  Why?  Why does Sara fill me with such longing?  It is the legacy….it is the realization the success Sara is experiencing at such a young age is the result of the work of an invisible generation.  As I type I see her father’s craggy face.  He has spent too much time in the sun. He has raised Sara to be different…he has allowed her to be more. In that fleeting moment I catch a glimpse of the road less traveled and as Frost says with eloquence and simplicity…that has made ALL the difference.

At this point, I had no idea of the sweeping changes that will come in the next few years.  In the relative calm of this period of life, I could not comprehend the transformation I would undergo.   BUT….the seed of desire are planted. What if I lived differently? What if my children grew up in an environment that made them somehow unique? I will bury this seed deep in my heart’s soil.  And like a seed planted right before a long winter…nothing happens…for a long, long time.  There is no visible change but beneath the frozen earth something is taking root, winding tentatively through the rock hard dirt.  These roots will be the critical factor when my moment of crisis comes.  They will firmly anchor my soul through the hurricane waves, pushing me towards the shoreline of my future.

Tonight’s theme is about the stage of change known as the precontemplative state.  My friend Debbie, wrote a paper about the importance of the this stage.  I remember standing in Debbie’s office and having an ah-ha moment as she explained, “There’s much research to support the idea. Those who spend time considering change, before they attempt it are often most successful.” There are reasons we don’t plant gardens, read great fiction, and spend more time working out.  They’re calling frantically from mismatched sock drawers, empty lunch boxes, and unsent thank you notes. If we are going to be different we have to find a path through the piles of obstacles.

All I want you to do for now is to think about change.  IF I fluttered in on fairy-god mother wings offering my magic wand…what would be your wish?  Glass slippers or eggplant eating children?  Better relationships or tighter abs?  Which of these is your handsome prince and what would you be willing to do for him? Would you give up the drive through, wake earlier, spend more time face to face and less with a blinking screen?  Seven years later…I work with a fiery daily determination on making my dreams come true. Like Sara’s dad, my dreams are seeds I plant to be harvested in the lives of my children that my rocky road less traveled might make them…different.