A nice little life, twenty years later

I haven't written anything here in a year. If I went a year without doing anything, I should probably write something witty or well-crafted, filled with wisdom and truth. Perhaps I will one day, but probably not today.

I'm 42 years old. If it's true that you're as young as you feel, I'm feeling older than 42. I've been out of college more than 20 years now. Twenty years. That's a big, round scary number. I can still remember a morning, I don't know which one, but there was a morning when I left for breakfast at the dining hall. It was so sunny that your eyes needed a few minutes to adjust to the brightness. The sky was still a little bleached out; it would reach its deepest blues a few months later, when I left the safety of college for the real world. And it was still chilly enough to require a jacket, and remind you that winter had recently departed and would be back again later. But as I walked out of the shadows of the great Harrington Hall, I could feel the warm of the sun bathe the exposed parts of my body, few though they were.

I wore jeans and sneakers, as always, and a white short-sleeve dress shirt with light blue stripes and a button-down collar. I was rakish, and if the women of SUNY Plattsburgh were as smart as their college educations indicated, I'd have been mobbed before getting to breakfast.

The air smelled good and its briskness was invigorating and reminded me of the promise ahead.

I don't remember a single other thing about that day. But that day and the ones since have been more good than bad, and I suppose you can't really ask for more than that.

I have two kids that amaze me on a daily basis, though I probably don't tell them that often enough. My wife is not a model, but she is the most supportive, loving person I know and if I could pick anyone to raise my children, it would be her. We have a nice house and I have a steady job and if I can manage to sell my books, we will probably do better financially than we currently are.

In the meantime, both she and I are reaching our kids and others' though parenting, scouting, coaching, and having one of the houses the kids like to come to. That's probably more because of her than me, but I'm learning from her every day.

It's a nice little life, twenty years later, and I suppose if I were to show it to my 22-year-old self, he'd be impressed. So who am I to complain?