The Monday after sitting proudly at my eldest's graduation from law school, I sat timidly on the San Diego trolley platform between two lives. Butterflies in my stomach, I pondered the mall and the quad. I'm going back to school.

I decided in sixth grade to go to law school. I didn't. I joked sometimes that my son was living out my dream, but it didn't really feel that way. I had no regrets about ditching law school for stay-at-home motherhood.

I mean, where do you get to adjudicate, deliberate, pontificate, and just plain argue more than as a mother? Indeed, I wondered whether this next phase -- a second career -- could produce anything as meaningful as the "down in the trenches" feel of raising kids.

So, staring at Fashion Valley, where I parked to take the trolley in to San Diego State, I felt a bit the imposter. Shouldn't I just be there shopping? And I don't mean that in a ditzy, Valley Girl way. Running a family actually takes a lot of shopping -- all that stuff doesn't just magically appear.

I called my friend, who told me to buck up and get on the train! So I hopped on the trolley.

In many ways, I am more nervous than when I first went to college as that bright-eyed 18-year-old, because I know how choices often lead down unexpected roads and to unforeseen circumstances. At the same time, I am less nervous, because that same experience has taught me few things are fatal.

The famous Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken," misunderstood in my youth as a foray into risk and maybe even rebellion, with courage and a big payoff, is now read more literally as two roads, almost identical -- "both that morning equally lay" -- but divergent. Knowing the finite quality of my time, my energy, my focus; or as Frost said, "knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back."

Frost captured so well the nature of crossroads. Even seemingly back at the same place as I head back to school, I am hardly at the same crossroads of 30 years ago.

Like many of you, I was laid off from my job. I want to stay in the field, and so while hiring freezes abound in social services, I am going to get a master's degree.

Instead of balancing motherhood and work, I will be balancing grandmotherhood and work, starting at that bottom rung of the ladder that gets only two weeks of vacation.

So I thank The Californian, which once again gave me space over the past eight months. I have enjoyed reconnecting with so many former readers and getting to know new readers. I have, as always, loved getting to interview interesting people and be in interesting places.

From the crossroads, I wave goodbye. Here's to moving forward, or as Frost ironically noted, at least moving.

Editor's note: This is Shari Crall's last column. We wish her well as she travels her new road.