I haven\u2019t written much about my brief time in Chicago. I\u2019ve wanted to but have always been too busy, too tired\u00a0or just\u00a0too overwhelmed to make sense enough of it all that could be put into words. Being away from home and family is like that. You\u2019re never whole. You\u2019re always alone on a fool\u2019s errand, or so it can seem.<\/p>\n
Adventures almost never end as well as we dream, though there is wisdom to be plucked from every day.<\/p>\n
So, tomorrow I\u2019m going home to my family and tomorrow can’t come soon enough. Home and my loved ones are just about all I can think about.<\/p>\n
But I have also thought about this a lot over the past couple of weeks and it is suddenly\u00a0desperately important to me that I share it with my sons.<\/p>\n
When I was fourteen or fifteen my dad was in Vietnam. He knew I was having trouble coming to grips with his absence, junior high, being a teenager and having the creeping suspicion that boys and girls are different and that it might be important to me someday. I was half-child, half-Martian. Life was confusing and difficult for me and I didn’t even know why.<\/p>\n
Dad sent me a copy of\u00a0Rudyard Kipling’s<\/strong>\u00a0“If…”<\/em><\/strong> and these words became the guiding light of my life.<\/p>\n I pass it on here to my sons and theirs. Works for daughters, too.<\/p>\n Read it from time to time, take it to heart and walk tall. It’s a powerful philosophy that can allow you to have your head in the stars with your feet always safely on the ground.<\/p>\n IF you can keep your head when all about you <\/strong><\/p>\n If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;\n
\n \n
\nAre losing theirs and blaming it on you,
\nIf you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
\nBut make allowance for their doubting too;
\nIf you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
\nOr being lied about, don\u2019t deal in lies,
\nOr being hated, don\u2019t give way to hating,
\nAnd yet don\u2019t look too good, nor talk too wise:
\nIf you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
\nIf you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
\nAnd treat those two impostors just the same;
\nIf you can bear to hear the truth you\u2019ve spoken
\nTwisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
\nOr watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
\nAnd stoop and build \u2018em up with worn-out tools: