The Aerie

Mem'ries

No, not dead. Not fully employed either. Just continuing to slog along through this endless summer, trying to enjoy and appreciate my daily freedoms and the chance to spend so much time with my kids, while not fretting my brains out regarding work and income. It really has been wonderful from that point of view. Even though much of the time I spend with the kids is in simple day-to-day being-around-the-house, still its a privilege many folks would be eager to enjoy. And don't get me started about what great kids they are, because I could just go on for a whole blog entry on that alone...

Failing to blog isn't just discouraging for those who would bother to read my blog (you crazy kids!), but really it's a disservice to me, too. This is the closest thing to a diary I've ever kept, and every stroll through past entries stretching back to 2000 revives long-lost memories of things from those ancient days. I have a memory like cheesecloth anyway, so my failure to blog this summer merely means that I shortly will have no chance whatsoever of remembering what I did or said or thought during this summer. A couple of years from now the summer of 2007 will, to me, be a vague impression of endless, jobless anxiety, biking on the Greenway for exercise, teaching a few classes and maybe our brief trip to the North Shore of Lake Superior. That will be it! My spouse will remind me of things we did or said this summer, and I'll give her that frustrating blank look that says "Sorry, no recollection."

I think she at least has become resigned to it, but my threadbare memory causes me terrible anguish. I only get one very short life, and yet days and weeks of it happen and pass away and I may as well have been asleep.

And now the summer is over, and September looms large in the headlights. Likely I will pick up some work, and time will step on the gas pedal. Before I know it another year will have passed. My twins will close half the distance between now and college; my beard will double its number of gray hairs if I'm lucky; my belly will pack on a couple more pounds despite my best intentions; and the secret counter in my heart will roll back more of the remaining beats before its last.

Today I got my tetanus booster, and when the medical person filled out my form she said, "That will be good through 2017."

"2017," I said, "I wonder what the world will be like then?"

And what will I remember then? Can I remember anything of 1997 right now? I started working at Born that year, I think. Not much else, although logically I could assemble some facts together to reconstruct what I must have been doing: twins, six; youngest, two; me working on Mitlanyal... Without digging through notes, that's it.

Now 1987? Well, that was a year to remember, despite all my attempts to forget. Dumped by my Significant Other, took up with one girl, went to Europe with another, then I met my wife in November, started gaming at M.A.R. Barker's. That was a busy, stressful year.

What about 1977? About to start my sophomore year of high school, one friend had already gone crazy and been carted away to juvie by now, I'd found my theater group friends, and already started horsing around on the Teletype in the computer room, rewriting Lunar Lander to create a greater variety of disastrous crashes.

And 1967? Five years old, with a new little brother. I have no actual memoriesof the time, except, well, wait, I have one. I didn't KNOW it was 1967 per se, but I remember staying up "late" to watch 'Star Trek' with my father on the porch in our house in New York City. Yeah, I can remember that. Wow. That even predates my memory of the Mets winning the World Series in 1969, and the lunar landing...

By 2017? Well, by then my youngest should be finished with college, my twins already well into their working careers. Will I be a grandfather yet? Hard to say. But at the very least, I'll be able by then to ease back on the income-earning part of life and maybe start taking it a little easier than I have been.

Assuming that I find a job between now and then.

Posted by Albatross at August 29, 2007 9:59 PM | TrackBack