Summary: <p>This summer I studied with my 94-year-old father-in-love a classic text that I had encountered before, but seeing it at the age of 61, I saw something I had never seen before, which now seems obvious. We were studying Robert Frost’s poem about being at the crossroads which famously concludes:</p> <p><em>I shall be telling this with a sigh</em></p> <p><em>Somewhere ages and ages hence:</em></p> <p><em>Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—</em></p> <p><em>I took the one less traveled by,</em></p> <p><em>And that has made all the difference.</em></p> <p>What I picked up this summer is the narrator’s lingering uncertainty, wistfulness, regret, about whether the decision at the crossroads was the right decision. The title jumped out at me this summer: The Road <em>Not</em> Taken. The sigh jumped out at me: <em>I shall be telling this with a</em> <em>sigh</em>. Maybe I messed up. Maybe I should have taken the road not taken.</p>
