Most Likely

Recently, as a not-too-time-consuming procrastinatory/entertainment activity, I've started to Google people from my past: my sixth-grade best friend (now a middle school social studies teacher, best I can tell), my third-grade best friend (impossible to track down, since she has the same first and last name as somebody who's been in the news a fair bit), the boy I had a crush on in the first half of elementary school (Ivy league professor specializing in Japanese popular culture), a particularly flamboyant camp counselor (can't tell what she's been up to--the combination of her first and last names, which seemed initially as though it must be unique, turns out to be a not uncommon upper-crusty joining of two old family names). And then, some people you know are just going to be a lost cause, so you don't bother looking: Margaret Baker, Rebecca Henderson, David Olson, Ricky Smith, Paul Giordano, Tony Peters, Debbie Ginsburg.

A day or two ago, I looked up a boy from my elementary school. He used to be kind of shy and second-smallest in the class, with moss-green corduroy pants, a pale little chin, and a flop of heavy silken dark blond hair constantly in his eyes. He would take time out regularly from third grade to go to the high school for math classes. I had found out some time ago that he and my husband actually went to Ivy University together as undergrads, and I knew they'd been in touch periodically since, though I didn't know details. I pictured him still small and eccentric, still slightly unkempt in green corduroy, and maybe, I don't know, a professor of theoretical physics at Reed or something. Yeah. Um, turns out he's Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security for the Bush Administration. Yikes. There's a picture. Short hair, suit and tie, a strong jaw, and scary, ultraconfident eyes.

Political allegiances aside, it made me think of all those women in the class notes of my college alumnae bulletin. I mean, I know, I know, I know that it's the classic response to reading one's class notes, but I can't help but feel abashed when I see the titles, the achievements. And I know, I know, I know there are plenty of others who haven't scaled any professional peaks, who are just going along, living odd or ordinary little lives. Having kids, gardening, organizing adult soccer leagues, learning to knit. But the other day I realized, reading the New York Times online, that the name in a series of policy article bylines I'd been half-registering as familiar was not that of somebody famous, but of a woman a couple years ahead of me in college. (Not to mention a founding mother of the Cool Smoking Lesbian clique that persisted to my year.)

I guess it all reminds me of what I thought I'd be. I think that a long time ago, I really thought I'd be special. I think I really believed that there was something about me that meant I'd always be lucky, and always impress, and find myself rising inexorably, if perhaps seemingly serendipitously, through some as-yet-unimagined but terribly important professional life. I didn't worry overly much about finding my path, figuring it would just happen, as easily as anything, as easily as I won a spelling bee or got an A+ in Trigonometry. In the high school yearbook, I was "Most Likely to Succeed." I effortlessly believed the hype.

What is it that separates those of us who scrape by, who just manage to get by day to day, from those golden, high-achieving ones we used to sit next to in freshman English? I have these moments of what feels in the instant like clarity, when I think it's mostly just expectations of oneself. That if I fully and naturally believed that I should and would end up as--whatever--President of Habitat for Humanity, a respected character actress in prestige films, US Secretary for Health and Human Services--that I would start doing what it takes to get there. And then I actually might get there, or alternately, might get somewhere just as good.

There's the old joke: Moishe asks G-d, "please let me win the lottery." Each week, Moishe's prayers get more insistent, more pleading, full of reminders that he has never asked for much, and promises that he'll never ask for anything else again. "Please, please, please, let me win the lottery!" Finally, G-d's voice booms down, "MOISHE, DO ME A FAVOR... BUY A TICKET."

I take solace in stories of late bloomers, people whose first notable achievements came in their 40s, 50s, 60s. There aren't that many, but there are some. And it does occasionally occur to me to try to cut myself some slack. My therapist said when I first started going to her, "When I see someone in their 30s or 40s who has clearly not lived up to his or her potential, my first thought is always depression." So, um, yeah, there's that. And there's having spent my 20s with chronic fatigue syndrome.

I'm itchy now, though. Itchy to get on with it, but still unsure what "it" is going to look like. Once I start my job as oncology nurse, I imagine that will keep me busy and striving and absorbed and learning and moving forward for a while. And making myself into a good oncology nurse can be the necessary next step in whatever my (delayed, idiosyncratic) career trajectory is going to be. I might also remind myself that in my heart of hearts, I am just fine not being Acting Under Secretary of anything.