A Final Word in a Cherished Conversation

Standing in line at the grocery store, I’m checking my watch as I unload my cart. I’m here between errands, due to pick up the kids from the dentist in minutes.

The woman ahead of me eyes my provisions. Two gallons of milk, a giant bag of oranges, Pop-Tarts, rabbit food, three dozen juice boxes

“Only three,” I tell her. And a bake sale tomorrow and snacks for the soccer teams this weekend.

I glance enviously at her purchases--a bottle of wine, fresh vegetables, salmon filets, French bread, gourmet pasta--and imagine myself in her shoes, heading home to a leisurely meal in a clean, quiet kitchen.

“I never had children,” she blurts out. “I always hoped I would; wonder what it would be like if I had.”

I smile and offer her my kids, but she doesn’t smile back, just collects her bags and leaves. Suddenly my shoes fit just fine. And a life that, until a moment ago, seemed impossibly messy and exhausting and complicated makes me feel like the luckiest woman alive.

I realize that sometimes we cannot choose our fate. But we still have the power to decide what we will lament and what we will appreciate.

This is my final column. Come Sunday, I’ll be moving on to a new assignment at the newspaper I’ve called home for 23 years.

I’ve never been much good at leaving behind, at saying goodbye. I still ache when I look out my kitchen window at the house across the street I left three years ago. It was time to move, and yet I still miss its shady front porch, the hibiscus bushes flanking the patio, the tinkle of my neighbor’s wind chimes wafting through my window at night.

Like all transitions in life, this one is bound to involve both gains and losses.

It will be a blessing to quiet the monologue in my head, as I’m no longer compelled to evaluate my every thought, emotion and act, for some sort of universal message to share.

My daughters can stop living their lives on stage, forced to admonish me--”Mommy, this is not for your column”--every time they have a private story to tell. My friends will no longer risk finding their foibles displayed on a newspaper page.

But the losses will be more substantial. What I’ll miss most is the privilege of what felt--irrationally, I suppose--like an intimate, ongoing chat with a million of my closest friends. Because just as my life has colored this column, your feedback has enriched my life.

Five years ago, I stumbled into this space, with a mandate only to write about life--about the things that make us human; the issues that divide us and the emotions that bind us.

When I began, I was still reeling from death of my husband three years before, struggling alone to raise three little girls, and trying to make sense of a life that had veered off course.

Those little girls are becoming lovely young women--strong and funny and wise and kind. Their mother has rediscovered love; has stopped mourning what wasn’t and learned to celebrate what is. And what I’ve learned while writing this column has often helped me on my way.

You taught me that we are more alike than different. That there is nothing we will be asked to do that someone before us has not already done. That even when we suffer in solitude, the struggle is not ours alone. That listening is more important than talking, forgiveness more powerful than revenge. And sometimes the best healing salve is the simple, inexorable march of time.

Every columnist’s final column seems to contain this apology: To all those readers who wrote, e-mailed or left messages, I’m sorry if I didn’t respond. Like the other columnists, I blame the press of news, the barrage of mail, the relentless push of twice-weekly deadlines.

But know that I read them all. There are boxes in my garage, filled with your letters, e-mails, photos and cards. I dip in and read them from time to time, when I need to be reminded of how thoughtful, how wise, how compassionate people in Los Angeles really are.

There is nothing I can leave you with to match all you have given me. So let me simply close by sharing one reader’s gift, a passage attributed to author Victor Hugo that has guided me through many difficult days:

“Have courage for the great sorrows of life, and patience for the small ones.

“And when you have laboriously accomplished your daily tasks, go to sleep in peace.

“God is awake!”

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Sandy Banks’ e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.