Righting the ship

Life is what happens while you make other plans.

I wish I could say I had planned to find a mentor in January 2008. I needed one as desperately as most of us today need a cash infusion in our retirement funds.

Sandy rode to the e-rescue. She had read my columns saying goodbye after my wife, Tina, in September 2007 died tragically. Sandy was Tina’s aunt’s cousin’s daughter’s sister’s niece, or something like that.

She is such a distant relative she lives in the Washington, D.C. area, outside the Beltway but close enough to catch some nasty political odors.

We had never met.

In fact, Sandy had met Tina only once, when Sandy was a teenager and the family had traveled to Minnesota for a visit. Sandy remembers lots of beautiful lakes and a 3-year-old girl with extremely blonde, almost white, hair and a sweet smile.

Long story short, Sandy and I began e-mailing back and forth each day. She was East Coast, I was West Coast. She was retirement age — 65 going on 27. I am 51 and have many more years to work to reach something other than a cat-food retirement.

Sandy is a night owl. I am a morning person.

Sandy is an artist and painter. I draw stick figures.

We both, however, step out onto our decks at night under the same bone-white moon.

And we still are communicating today, 17 months later.

Each morning I get up at 4:44 (four is my lucky number) and turn on the computer, looking for her e-mail letter, which sometimes she has finished only minutes earlier.

She gives me advice, when I ask. A pet lover, she has lots of knowledge on the care and feeding of dogs, cats, parrots and starlings. She gave me much help in managing the menagerie Tina left behind.

Sandy also gave me courage. After a year of rebuilding my life, I started to think about dating again. Sandy told me repeatedly that I deserved the best woman out there period, end of discussion.

Sandy cheers on my writing. She makes me believe I could write for the Washington Post, or just about anywhere. It’s a liberating feeling, especially now as the recession picks up newspapers by the belt loops and shakes them.

Sandy empathizes with my difficulties facing a chronic illness that provides daily challenges.

But she won’t let me whine.

If I get on the pity-potty, she gently knocks enough sense into me so I know I am hurting only myself.

We’ve been through the deaths of dear friends together. We’ve been through drastic life changes, as when her husband retired after a long career with the Department of Agriculture.

The point is, if you have a mentor, great. If you are a mentor to someone else, equally wonderful, as long as your protege salutes in the appropriate fashion.

The mentor-protege relationship is not just a passing fad. It’s not like pet rocks, Slinkies or smiley faces. It’s a rock-solid contributor to quality of life in which nutritional supplements go only so far.

Mentors play important roles. Take professional basketball as one example. NBA coach Red Holtzman served as a mentor to Phil Jackson, one of the most successful coaches in history. And Jackson served as a mentor to superstar Michael Jordan, who served as a mentor to Kwame Brown, the NBA’s No. 1 draft pick in 2001.

Or take Elizabeth Cady Stanton, leader of US suffrage movement. She was a mentor to Susan B. Anthony, the women’s rights activist who has her face on a dollar coin.

I may never get my face on a coin, but I do hope to serve as a mentor to someone else someday.

In the meantime, Sandy helps me see that I cannot outrun my problems. I cannot get comfortably numb through alcohol and think they will go away.

The joy of life, it seems, is taking the problems head on one by one. It’s celebrating a problem solved.

I’m grateful that someone stepped in to help right this ship in stormy seas.

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