Richard Olmer

Well, maybe I haven't done it all; but I had no desire to do it all. I grew up with two sisters; I never wanted a sex change operation. I grew up with two reasonable parents; I never wanted to be adopted. I grew up loved; I never wanted to be miserable. I grew up reasonably intelligent; I never wished that I were dumb. While I was a teenager, I was a caddy; I never wanted to be a golfer.

Oh, I wish that I were born handsome and rich but it's been fun to have to work to get some things. Besides I would have been a not-so-nice person if I had been both rich and handsome. As it is, I'm not so happy with myself that I can afford to anger a lot of folks. Good parents and a good family helped me growing up. So did my dreams and the fact that I didn't have to take life too seriously.

I always had enough to dream of, more to learn and knew that I really didn't want fame or celebrity.

I've enjoyed being a moderate success with a wee bit of luck and the ability to learn something from my mistakes. I grew up with God and have come to peace with him in my later years.

I love the place where I live and my wife and having sons on the other end of the continent. I've worked and played and dreamed my way through almost 70 years. I've been loved and loved others ... and still do. Life has been good, even when it has been bad.

I have learned something from every place that I have been and every person that I have interacted with ... and life has been good. I have built things up and torn things down and learned to accept my imperfections. I adore my wife and am proud of my children by birth or happenstance.

I've probably done everything that I needed to do; not nearly everything that I wanted to do. I'd like to think that I haven't wasted too much time, just enough to please myself. My regrets are mostly about the folks that I've never thanked who helped me through life and the secrets that I've never shared, some because of promises, some because of guilt or ego (which are pretty much the same thing).

I walked through the world as a kid and although I have spent some time underwater, almost reached outer space, flown more than I'd like to and driven almost everywhere; walking still is my preferred way of getting around.

When you walk, you can see the world you pass through, feel the wind and the temperature, smell the landscape and your surroundings, and hear all sorts of things that you otherwise would miss - things like waves crashing on an unseen shore, foghorns on passing ships that you cannot see, the sound of a bird's wing as it pushes air away over your head or the quiet of snow in the woods. Yes, you can even hear quiet. You can sometimes smell sunshine and maybe even you can hear God whisper to you.

And then, too, sometimes you can see what always has been true but things that you almost never notice - things like that a path is seldom a straight line from one point to another point. A path almost always weaves its way ... like human experience or logic or argument or love.



Richard Olmer can be reached via e-mail at columnists@sequimgazette.com.