Make My Day: Inspirational Stories and Quotes

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

Robert Frost

No Such Word as Can't


When the Great Depression hit Michigan’s upper peninsula, it destroyed my grandfather’s successful auto parts business and the family was forced to leave their large home in town, and relocate to “the farm”, a family property some thirty miles south over the Wisconsin border. The property consisted of a two-story log cabin, a barn and a few outbuildings. There, my mother and her four brothers grew to adulthood before joining the military or moving to Chicago to pursue their destinies.

As a child, for a few weeks each summer, I was allowed to abandon city life and spend time with my grandparents on the farm. It wasn’t a working farm per se, although my grandmother cultivated a substantial summer garden of peas, beans, carrots, potatoes, mint and sundry other veggies. There was also an abundance of wild raspberries, blackberries and strawberries, ripe for the picking as I trampled field and forest with the dogs, Butch and Pepper.

During my visits, my grandmother was a great inspiration to me, and her can-do attitude shaped my thinking and worldview as a child and young adult. She was a resourceful woman, and played a major role in supporting the family throughout the depression. She told countless stories of how, as a young woman, she had ridden a cow in the snow to the one-room schoolhouse where she taught; how she had taken a job with the county where she traveled around to teach women how to safely can and preserve fruits and vegetables. She always found little ways to supplement the family income. She never wasted food. What didn’t get eaten at supper was sure to turn up in the next morning’s breakfast.

One of my grandmother’s favorite sayings was “There is no such word as can’t”. Now, I was a schoolish and bright child, and I knew perfectly well that “can’t” was a contraction of the words can and not. So for many years, I was baffled by her insistence that the word can’t did not exist. But it gradually began to sink in. She was telling me that I could do whatever I set my mind to, that “can’t” was a copout, a lazy excuse for the weak of spirit. To this day, her adage is my guiding star. Things may be difficult, and challenges and obstacles regularly rear their unsavory heads. But I know that with perseverance and determination, I can do whatever I set my heart to.

Thanks, Grandma, for being a strong role model. Because of your mentoring and guidance, I have accomplished things and gone places that many only dream about. And I have passed that legacy on to my own sons and daughters, who know that I don’t accept “can’t” for an answer.