Unexpected Pivots Help You Grow

It’s the unexpected pivots, the ones you can't anticipate, that change you the most. My first real pivot happened when I was 18.

I was fresh out of high school and lost in the liminal space that threatens to swallow you whole after graduation. He was a year younger than me and starting his senior year.

I was in a space where I was standing with one foot was planted squarely in the past, and the other was slipping slowly toward an uncertain future. So much uncertainty and anxiety about how to be as I moved from one phase of my life to another.

His name was David. He was my last link to high school, the only place that still made sense to me in that dizzying time.

Like most kids in suburbia, we lived in choppy little neighborhoods where cookie-cutter houses lined the shores of the asphalt river that connected us to our homes, school, to baseball fields, and McDonald’s after football games on Friday nights.

Our young romance began during my senior year, months before I graduated. It bloomed all summer, and I was convinced that it was true love — the forever kind that is impermeable to outside threats. But as summer waned and fall approached, we suddenly found ourselves living in different worlds.

He was now the high school senior and I was clueless freshman in college. The thread that bound us to each other all summer long began to fray. His world moored inside the bubble of high school hall ways; mine might as well have been floating on the open seas.

The end came abruptly on a sunny fall afternoon. He had finally mustered the courage to admit he wanted to break up with me. His small world was consumed by football practice and cheerleaders. My world was vast in comparison, wide open and freer than anything he could imagine.

He looked at me with pleading eyes, begging me to let him off the hook, to move on. I should have, but I wasn't ready to face all that open space outside. I wasn’t ready to let go; I was too afraid to move forward and unable to move back.

The afternoon of our break up, we stood ridged at the edge of his driveway, face to face, unsure what to do next.

The shock I felt the moment he uttered the word “breakup” must be what the trees feel on the night of the first frost. I felt ambushed and cold.

I didn’t see our breakup coming because I refused to. The signs were there, but I was too busy treading water, trying to keep from drowning in my new life. Our summer romance was the buoy that kept me above water and anchored in the past where the ground felt solid and safe.

We stood there hurling hurtful words back and forth, defending our choices, and not giving up any ground. I questioned him relentlessly, but his flim-flam responses only revealed how far he had already drifted away.

“I just think we should see other people.”

The moment he uttered those words something so bizarre happened that I still question myself about it to this day.

“Moooooo …”

We stopped talking, eyes wide, mouths hanging open, and turned our heads in unison toward the sound. Standing at the end of his drive way in the middle of the cul-de-sac was a car-sized, brown cow. A living, breathing, cud chewing cow.

It was as if it had dropped out of the sky like a meteor.

“Mooooo …”

A massive cow was literally standing in the middle of a neighborhood, in the middle of the suburbs — where it had no reason to be — blinking its round, dewy eyes, and looking as confused by its predicament as we were.

The situation was so surreal that I wondered if I were hallucinating from the shock of the break up.

“Is that real?! Is that really a cow in the street,” I asked.

“What the fuck?” he said. “Yeah, that’s a real cow.”

The surprise we felt was like a pin prick that bursted an over-inflated ballon, spilling hilarity all over us. We laughed until our ribs hurt. It was all so damned strange.

Looking back, I can see now that afternoon was an unexpected shift in my life that lead me where I am today. The road forked and I had to choose one path or the other.

It’s those moments — those pivots you don’t see coming— that force you to shift, pick a path, and go on living.

One Small Pivot Can Change Everything

More than 30 years have passed since my afternoon with that cow. I no longer blame David for the clunky way he handled the break up. Nor do I still blame myself for the way I grieved for months afterward. We were just dumb, clueless kids trying to find our way without compasses to guide us.

The pivots you don’t see coming that force you to change direction, grow up, pick a side, or take a new path. They seize your shoulders and shake you awake. Life’s hardest won lessons are what propel you forward. Like fertilizer in the garden, they stink but they help you to grow.

Eventually, past pain fades and what’s left are the memories and lessons you carry with you. I now have a husband I love, two amazing adult children, and two “bonus kids” I adore. My pivot that day lead me here. I wouldn’t change a thing.