Summer of '69 - when the Earth shifted

In the early days of the Summer of '69 I was as close to being on top of the world as any small town 14-year-old kid from Ohio was likely to be. Not only was I approaching the promised land of High School - they had built us a new High School. It was not just a new building, it was a completely new school. The towns of Seven Mile & Trenton, Ohio, had consolidated to form a single district, and Edgewood High School was to open that Fall.

I was part of a good circle of friends, and I was well thought of in my community. Beyond that, a new school held a special appeal for me, since I was a little brother - and so in my days as a Seven Mile Spartan, I was primarily known at school as the little brother of Dave & Paul. Now, though, as I stood on the brink of becoming an Edgewood Cougar, I was preparing to enter a school where the majority of folks had never heard of my brothers. I was signed up for a college-prep track - no small thing in a day when far fewer people attempted higher education. New possibilities and improved options stood waiting for me, and I was getting ready to be part of the first class ever to spend all 4 years of its High School career at the brand new Edgewood School. The possibilities were, if not endless, really, really good.

That's when the Earth shifted under my 14-year-old world.

My Methodist-Minister father got "the call" from his Conference office, which meant that he was being assigned to a post in McComb, Ohio - 2 & 1/2 hours away from Seven Mile, where I would attend a small, old High School that didn't offer any of the classes for which I had been signed up by my principal at Seven Mile. (The fact that I would eventually love McComb seemed incomprehensible to me at the time. Only after surviving a Fall where just about every imagined terror of being the new kid actually happened did I begin to have any appreciation for the place).

New building and old friends - gone.

The security of the familiar - gone.

Being known - traded for the anonymity (& simultaneous spotlight) of being the new kid in a small town.

When Apollo 11 landed that Summer, I watched it sprawled on the wooden floor of a not-yet-unpacked house, and not with the friends with whom I had watched countless other NASA missions as we wondered aloud if there would ever, really, be a moon landing.

I didn't know at the time that I was in mourning for a life I had lost.

When the rope that tied me to the world I had known was cut, though, one tiny strand remained intact.

A few weeks after the moon landing, Dad drove me back to a Church Camp where I got to spend a week with kids from my old Church youth group. I was so excited to be back on familiar ground with people who knew me that it took me a day to begin to notice the other campers who were there. When I did notice them though, the one whom I noticed the most was a red-haired girl who 'spoke my language' - who shared the same interests and sense of humor that I had. I didn't realize yet that this one thin strand connecting me to my "old" life was also going to tie me to my life's future. Through a series of events too unlikely & lengthy to recount here, I married that girl less than 7 years later. We're the parents of 3 of the best people on the planet.

Sometimes our whole world does shake. Relationships end. Jobs evaporate. Friends & loved ones die. Disease robs us of the illusion that there are no limits on our time or abilities. We are betrayed, or find ourselves ignored by the world.

In the Summer of '69 (when big parts of the world were shifting for lots of people), it was almost impossible for me to see past the life I had lost. I didn't know the rich possibilities that existed in the life that I was actually living (as opposed to the one to which I wanted to cling with all my might). The mourning was real - so were the new possibilities.

I'd love to say that I've gotten a lot speedier at realizing the new, living, possibilities that exist when my world gets shaken apart, but human nature is strong, and I just don't like it when the Earth shifts under me. When has your world shaken apart? Do you feel tremors (or actual earthquakes) right now?

When it happens (not if, but when), the tiniest strand of hope can link us to whatever connects with new possibilities. It doesn't work if we use it to tie ourselves to the past, or to the life that we demand - but if we allow it to, it can connect us to the real, surprising futures awaiting in the life we're actually living.