Midlife Meditation

This is my last reference to the Hotel California. Really. Amy and I did not arrive in the Rogue Valley together. She drove down with Alex and Sarah, who were concerned that I was not in the car, and were fearfully wondering that something had happened to our relationship. She straightened them out, and now I shall do the same for you. The phone call came Saturday. We'd been driving all day, had stopped at the QFC for some groceries, and were about to drive the final mile back to the house, when I realized I had missed a call while we were shopping. I didn't recognize the number, but a voice mail had been left, so I pulled into a parking space and listened as a principal asked if I was still interested in a full-time elementary music position in the Reynolds School District. Needless to say, I called her right back and set up an interview for the earliest time she had available: 4:15 on Monday, well past the time we had hoped to be on our way down to Southern Oregon for our...

 Welcome to the Hotel Medford. Actually, it was a rental cabin located in the hills above Jacksonville, and we only just grazed Medford a couple of times for a Harry & David run and a burger at Jasper's. But all the time we were in the Rogue Valley, I was keenly aware that, once again, I was in a place that had been both traumatic and formative, and that I was there voluntarily. Medford was where I learned I could not truly come home to Methodism in Oregon. It was where the family demon of authority issues dragged me into a depression so deep that I finally acknowledged it was a problem for me; where injuries sidelined me from running for the first time since I took up the sport; where my first marriage headed up the ramp toward divorce; and where my son Sean was born, and nearly died. All this happened over the course of less than a year. It was also, and remains, an incredibly beautiful place, a part of Oregon that has a character and culture all its own, that fost...