The Angels are Older

Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?

In the mid 1990s, I was living and working in my boyhood town of Boca Raton, FL. Everything was awesome. My wife and I lived on the beach in an apartment which had a ridiculously low rent. On the way home from work, I’d stop at the grocery store and grab a bottle of wine and some cheese. We’d sit on the beach and have a little picnic as our one-year old played in the shallow tidal pools.

But as cool as that was, we wanted a house with a backyard, a swing set, a kiddie pool. We wanted to grow our family, and started looking with a realtor.

My parents tried to warn me of my folly. My company had just instituted their first-ever layoff. Our plant was only half occupied and there were rumors of our mission being transferred to a sister plant in TX. Rumors about the stability our our site flew; there was a widespread blanket of anxiety.

Against this backdrop, we built our dream house. Every weekend, we’d go assess the progress as the slab was poured, the walls went up, our cabinets and carpeting and tile were installed. Our mortgage was roughy twice what we were paying in rent.

We lived there one year in utter bliss and contentment. I have pix with our oldest going down the slide into the kiddie pool. My parents shook their heads.

Almost one year to the day after signing all the documents at the signing, our company dropped a bombshell; the Boca plant was being closed.

I called and emailed over 100 colleagues in three counties trying to find a job. Calls not returned, hiring freezes, “Oh, you just missed him,” sorry.

My only option was to accept a transfer to a new position in my company in NC.

Goodbye, dream house. Farewell, beachfront apartment. So long, boyhood town, Mom and Pop, everything I knew and loved and grew up with.

I’ve kicked myself for not listening to my folks. Had we stayed in the apartment, not taken on that big mortgage, I could have had the funds to stay afloat while I looked for a job outside my field. Many of my friends from work did that, and now I see them on FB, boating down the Intracoastal on weekends, diving, waterskiing, their kids going to UF, palm trees and warm ocean breezes.

My folks missed seeing our three kids growing up. I missed the camaraderie with my childhood friends, the old familiar places, our church family, games up at UF.

“For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, “It might have been.” 

– Whittier