Expectation's Edge

Summary:
From the book, "Break Out: Finding Freedom
When You Don't Quite Fit The Mold,"
a modern literary memoir of 51 short stories
about what it means to be presumed different.

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant:
if we did not sometimes taste of adversity,
prosperity would not be so welcome."
-Anne Bradstreet
Thirty-three Meditations

His bare chest bulged with muscles only obtained through weight lifting. His jeans gently followed the contours of his thighs. His feet tracked perfectly as he threw the football to his partner. He cringed as the overthrown ball floated beyond his partner's reach into the dorm's bushes.

He grabbed the next throw from his partner but fumbled it, ever so slightly, at the last second. Just a quick break from studying after the first week of classes, I thought.

But, then I heard him cuss at the football. In anger, he heaved it to the other fellow, who dove to his right to catch it and missed it by two feet. The ball bounced haphazardly onto the ground.

I wondered how many young fellows harbor unrealistic expectations about the ease with which the basic skills of football are mastered. Perhaps the aftermath of too many Sunday afternoon football games, televised with slow motion and instant reruns, I thought.

Through one of the first floor rooms in the dorm facing me, I could see a black and white TV screen scanning the grid of a football field.

It was an unusually warm Sunday in September, but the expectation of crisper days ahead floated through the muggy air with an occasional oak leaf, still green and succulent but tinged with blotches of yellow and brown.

Classes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus had just started for the 1994 fall term, and the bicycle path along the Lake Shore dorms was unusually busy. Pam and I decided to take a break from our walk and sat down to rest at a picnic table outside Ogden Hall -- she reading a book and I absorbing the serenity.

To be more truthful, it had been more like half a walk. Pam did the walking, and I rode beside her in my electric scooter. But, we were now at our favorite stopping point, beneath the stately oaks of what was once known as the "short-course" dorms.

The cluster of oaks dotted the expansive lawn leading down to Lake Mendota's shoreline, across from the dorms. I tried to imagine how many students, each building expectations for his or her life, had enjoyed this cathedral's shelter from summer sun and winter wind.

Three men suddenly came around the corner of the dorm, walking with purpose in a cadence that only members of the same family seem to sometimes have. The trio were grandfather, father, son, I surmised, as I looked at their faces -- each with a square, prominent jaw.

What kind of dreams did the grandfather and father have for the young man, who took the lead into the front door of the dorm? What pressure did he feel to trace their footsteps, to carry on a family tradition, to establish a mark of his own?

It was here, 30 years ago, that I wiggled my way down to the edge of Lake Mendota's water to watch the waves stroke the shore's oak roots and worn rocks and to look down into the brackish water to discover a deeper dream for my life.

But, at that time, my dream was simple and undifferentiated: independence. A job that didn't involve physical labor. A place to live not tied to the family farm. A spouse who cared about who I was. A sense of accomplishment.

Common though they were, those dreams had propelled me through the difficult times and had come true for me. And, there were extra layers of richness and heartache that I could have never anticipated as a college senior about to graduate with no prospects of a job.

A single oak leaf, one of the first to turn completely yellow and yield to its inborn fate, sliced through the still, thick air and landed on the top of our picnic table.

I wiped it off the table. It fell onto the grass, a complement to the lawn's late summer green but still oddly out of place.

In some ways, being different had been a blessing.

When I was a year old, I had escaped death but seemed destined to live life in an institution. When I was two, my doctor said I would never walk and go to school. When I was four, I still couldn't walk. And, when I was eight, I had to take first grade over again. When I was 16, going to college was still an open question. When I was 32, I was self supporting but still living with my parents.

Succeeding in what others would consider basic and uneventful in their own lives had given me a sense of accomplishment others may hope for but never really achieve.

Perhaps it's because their expectations have fewer recognizable boundaries and, as a result, disappoint instead of satisfy when they are not fulfilled. Or, maybe their dreams are redundant -- a replication of what others have done, and, as a result, the pursuit of those dreams fizzles into boredom.

It probably depends on where a person starts from. As we flutter through life, we each need some surprise and amazement -- and the right amount of stretch.

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