Cynthia Anne Frank Stupnik
When Frank, the boys, and I moved to South Dakota from Minnesota in 1984, I had no idea that all of us would be taking different paths. Our new homeland offered adventures for the three men; however, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life. As my children began to find lives of their own, I became bored. Trying to fill my life up with “projects” seemed futile. I had always dreamed of getting a more thorough education. I made a call to our local community college. I enrolled as a full-time student, enjoyed the psychology, history, computer and theology classes I took but had no idea what degree I wanted to pursue. Once I took a few English classes, composition and literature, I knew the direction I needed to take. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” best explains the rationale for the direction I took when I left the family cocoon :
 

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 kept 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.

I went on to earn my B.A. in English Education at SDSU. I taught English in a small high school, wrote poetry, essays, creative fiction and non-fiction, (entered a number of contests where I a number of awards and became published in a some small press publications as well), published Steppes to Neu Odessa  (1996, 2002) became South Dakota Poetry Society’s editor, and still had time to be a mother and wife. I came to the conclusion that I still wanted more, so I entered grad school at SDSU and earned an M.A. in English. In my final semester, I accepted a position as an English instructor at a technical school.

I am not sure I will ever seriously look back “with a sigh” as Frost’s line implies because the road I have taken HAS made all the difference in my life.

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