IF ONLY

My early experiences in life left me believing that whenever something bad happened, it was liable to snowball into an all-out catastrophe. My parents’ divorce, my mom’s cancer, and the move to California precipitated my first tailspin, but it wasn’t my last.

And I’d come to understand that one decision—even one that might have seemed insignificant at the time—can change the entire course of your life.

If I hadn’t tried to peek at another’s student’s answers on a test in fifth grade, I’ve told myself on occasion, I would have gone on to sixth grade with the class I’d been in since I was seven—my school “family”; I wouldn’t have concluded that I wasn’t smart enough to be in the gifted group, and I would have continued to have a sense of belonging somewhere, even as my nuclear family was falling apart. My hunch is also that, if not for the debacle in Mr. Main’s class, Kathy and I would have been cabin mates at camp the summer after sixth grade, as we’d planned, and that we would have remained friends. And I would never have agreed to move to California. As it was, the loss of that friendship was the final straw. If I’d had even one vital connection that didn’t break during that crisis in my life, I know I never would have considered leaving St. Anthony Park—my roots there went too deep.

All of which isn’t to say that if I’d stayed in Minnesota, my life would have been easy—it’s possible I would have needed professional help to get back on track—but there were some positive things that started happening in seventh grade at Murray High. It wasn’t just the choir director who noticed me but a couple of other teachers as well. My art teacher was impressed enough with a drawing I did in class—an abstract of modern dancers—that she took me aside to give me watercolor lessons and chose me to make the crowns for the homecoming king and queen, which I started but didn’t have the confidence to finish. My history teacher also took a liking to me, attention that I didn’t feel I deserved because I was getting help with my homework from another girl in my class. Once again, I also had a teacher who didn’t seem to like me from the outset—my home economics instructor—but by the end of the school year, she’d done a complete turnaround. I’ve always supposed that, Murray High being a relatively small school, she’d heard good things about me from the other teachers.

Of course, I realize it’s idle to play “If Only.” If I’d continued to live in Minnesota, I might have drowned in a lake one summer like my first crush, Peter.

Still, apart from a tragic event in our lives, I’ve always felt that my mom taking Doug and me to California was the worst thing that could have happened to any of us, and I know my dad and Doug would agree.

If we’d stayed in Minnesota, though my mother might have continued to be remote, as she was during my seventh grade year, I don’t believe she would ever have become overtly abusive. I believe that remaining in the place where she’d come into her own as an adult would have made all the difference, a place where she had a successful career, a circle of good friends, and a family life that didn’t overtax her—all at a remove from her traumatic childhood. Besides, I’m as sure as I can be that my father’s proximity would have put a check on her aggressiveness—that she wouldn’t have dared mistreat Doug and me because he wouldn’t have permitted it; he would have sued for custody.

Unfortunately, in California she regressed, unprepared for all the responsibilities of being, in effect, a single parent, ­a situation that, I’m convinced, triggered all her childhood anxiety and anger about being unloved and overburdened with the care of the house and her siblings whenever her mother took to her bed. And now she was back where all those dark memories originated.

By the same token, if we’d stayed in Minnesota and my father had continued to have Doug and me in his life, I doubt he would have become ill and cut himself off from us emotionally. He’d had a buoyancy and optimism that my mother lacked, as well as a fearlessness in the face of the world. As long as I’d I had at least one parent who was coping, perhaps I wouldn’t have become so utterly hopeless. As it was, in California, I was dragged down into netherworld of my mother’s fearfulness, fury, and despair.

All of which is to say that, in hindsight, it looks to me like much of the emotional wreckage of my family after the divorce and my mother’s cancer need never have happened.

Needless to say, it’s painful to contemplate how differently things might have turned out, if only…