One night, in a moment of instrospection, I had this thought:
Whoever thought that the child of a single mother raised on welfare would earn a doctorate and later travel around the world?
It probably happens more times than I’m aware. (I hope so.) But for me, it seems like an extraordinary thing.
When I was a child, my mother was on welfare and stayed home to take care of me. She put money away to send me to Catholic school (which was free at first, but they added tuition later on, especially for high school) and hoped for the best for me.
I was driven to please her and be successful in school. That striving continued throughout my life, and explains my affinity for the ever-striving character of Goethe’s Faust.
Fortunately, that start with welfare was a hand-up, not a hand-out, as people often say. It put me on the right track for the future. When I got to college, I had another hand-up with grants that paid for my tuition, room and board, and even for my books. I graduated with no debt, and so could easily continue on for my grad degrees.
I worked hard as a professor because I was always seeking promotion, or fame, or professional advancement. And also especially working for the welfare of my students whose success was always important to me. Now, retired, I get to use the money I earned and invested over the years to travel—and in fact am using travel as a way of seeing places that I taught about in my theatre courses. The recent visit to the amphitheater in Taormina, Sicily is the ideal example. And seeing that Goethe had been there years earlier made it even more impactful.
Sanding on the balcony of a large cruise ship, and watching Mediterranean countries passing by—it still amazes me that I am there.
