The past year presented me with a fork in the road on which I had been traveling for a long time.
My choice was to continue to work in the field of Creative Aging, which I started almost by accident in the late 1970’s, or to go in a new direction. I had spent the years showing men and women over 60 many different ways to spend their retiring years, helping them find meaning and purpose after work, asking them what they had dreamed of doing and not yet done. I have no personal interest in becoming a retired stereotype – I want to continue to have adventures.
During the year, I reflected how many of my interesting experiences had come about almost accidentally. What made them adventures was their unexpectedness, their requirement to abandon different plans.
For instance, I came to the US to take a job that my mother had applied for – in my name. This resulted in several terrific years of working for Pan American Airways. 
In those days, flying was a big deal, people dressed up, in-flight service was elaborate and personal, and the airline (through us) injected glamour into the flights. The aircraft were smaller, flights took longer and were not as frequent – there was a busy season and a slow season even. All of these factors made it possible to act as hostesses on the flights and engage passengers.
Crews were also able to spend more time in the destinations. I rode horses in the hills above Tehran, met the chief of the Shah’s Palace Guard and was escorted to restaurants and clubs frequented by the ruling elite. On the round the world flights, I listened to, and consoled, the awfully young members of US elite forces on their way to fight in Vietnam. We flew excited nuclear submariners home to Rhode island; saw capital cities in Europe and the Middle East before the advent of McDonalds and others; In Bangkok took taxi-boats tours of the klons (canals),that punctuated the city, we saw shops where the beautiful Thai silk was woven, and exotic temples, such as the one with the huge golden reclining Buddha. Its grandeur was in contrast to the temple-buildings decorated with broken pottery that had not survived sea voyages. Riding in Portuguese vineyards dressed in traditional cowboy gear, sailing along the Lebanese coast to Byblos, the town reputed to have given the Bible its name; dancing in discos on the river in Rome; visiting palaces, galleries, bridges, ancient castles in France, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, even England.
Oh, the people I met, the stories I heard, the adventures (and some misadventures) I had! After those years I was able to marry, and settle down to all the unexpected experiences of mothering.
Some years later, when my two daughters were in school, to my surprise I was asked to set up a school-wide art program in a experimental middle school. I learned how the arts could serve people like the children trying to deal with trauma, those who had self-esteem doubts, others who wanted to be good at something. I astounded the classroom teachers by giving all 250 kids A’s for creativity; we compromised by grading cleanup, and not everyone received good grades for that.
Observing the creative processes with the children led me to enter a Masters in Creative Arts Therapy program. My required fieldwork placements led to Community Mental health and by accident, the Geriatrics Department of a Hospital. I fell in love with the stories I heard from the elderly patients during those couple of months and, when I was offered a position late,r I was happy to take it. Thus began 39 years of working in the field.
Now I am at the fork in the road. Continue my rewarding interesting creative work in the field of aging – or try something else?