As luck would have it

Scott was most likely to succeed. Becky was a cheerleader. Ann was beautiful. They were smart and fun and invited to everything. They were the luckiest.

I lived in and out of their good graces. I was a farm kid. I swam in an irrigation ditch and played in a barn. The caché of all that wore off around junior high, when competitive sports and pep club tryouts defined our desirability.

We all grew up together in Cozad, Nebr., alfalfa capital of the world. We shared the tragedy of a small-town school, where fat kids, poor kids, dumb kids, ugly kids and gay kids are stuck with the most unflattering reflection of themselves until the day they escape and blossom into what they really are. This arbitrary caste system was reinforced every time we picked teams for kickball in gym, had birthday parties or ate lunch in the cafeteria.

I was somewhere in the middle - a girl of the people. I got along with everyone and fit in nowhere. As my adolescent personality congealed around the secret traumas of early life, I vacillated between brooding, self-obsessed loner and high priestess of bacchanalia. Near the height of my suicidal tendencies I was voted "Best Sense of Humor" in the Class of '79.

By then, I was as far away from Scott and Becky and Ann as I would ever be. The day we graduated, it was obvious they would go off to college, marry well and have fantastic lives. I would slide into a pit of dispair and alcohol abuse that would culminate in a rather dramatic attempt at self-immolation by lunging from a speeding police car. Officer Terry Fuehrer of the Nebraska State Patrol brought the car to a halt holding on to the hem of my leather coat, with my face about an inch from the asphalt.

I never thanked him.

I did not know then what life would become. I did not know that in 20 years I would emerge from heartbreaks and trials ever stronger and more grateful. I did not know that I could be moved to tears of joy by the voice of a 12-year-old. I did not know that the most beautiful and intelligent people on earth would be my beloved friends. I did not know the great song of God includes all things, all places, all circumstances. I did not understand the extent to which I would celebrate the experience of just being human. I did not know that the touch of a lover, the first light of morning, the smell of fresh bread or the sight of an orchid was enough to live for alone. I did not know what a gift it was to live, and that all life was God's gift to God.

And so it was I went back to my 20th high school reunion, knowing that nothing is more precious, beautiful and complex than the few moments we spend being people. Life for the luckiest was not as kind. Scott was in prison for armed robbery, haunted by suspicion he murdered his beautiful young wife. Becky was getting divorced after serving time for embezzling millions from a bank, and Ann, the most beautiful girl in school was dying. She was always dying from cystic fibrosis, but when we were kids, it was possible to pervert it into something that made her even more special. Twenty years later, it was a hated visitation wringing out her life from the inside-out.

How wasted was my envy. How misplaced my jealousy. How unpredictably the road turned, leaving me the luckiest after all.

Sunday, August 1, 1999

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.