One early spring morning while awakening from a sound nights sleep, as the cobwebs in my mind slowly cleared, it struck me---I’m sixty-four years old! That means my wife of thirty-seven years, Kathi, is…ahh… twenty-nine. (Can I submit the manuscript now, dear?). Transitioning from wife-friendly arithmetic to rational thought processing, I realized our son and daughter were approaching middle age. When did they get that old? Where did the time go? It seems like just yesterday I was entering middle age.
Of course I knew the ages of my family members prior to that enlightening moment, but ages, along with countless other happenings and developments over the years had zoomed by, not fully registering. Sages tell us life is a dream, a perceptual falsehood. The theory fit like a glove that edifying day. It seemed I woke from a dream, at least temporarily, finding a large portion of my life was over, kaput, history. I’d envisioned myself a modern day sage, a repository of wisdom, a being living in total harmony with the world around me by age sixty-four. I was considerably behind schedule.
Bent on sorting out the morning’s revelations, I settled into a cushioned chair on our screened back porch, the ineffable spot from where I singlehandedly solve all the major problems plaguing the world. Comfortably situated, I surveyed the backyard. The grass, still wet with dew, glistened in the emerging sunlight. A handful of honey bees, the day’s first signs of insect life, methodically worked their way from flower to flower. A pair of early bird squirrels busily rummaged through the mulch beds. The back yard was awakening to another glorious day. Savoring the aroma of my freshly brewed coffee in the early dawn calm, the stillness that permeates nature, my thoughts traveled back, assessing the seemingly lost last sixty-four years.
