Time.

One of the things that came about as a result of my keeping a journal for all those years - starting at age fourteen - was that I began to brood on the topics of time, memory, and mortality earlier in life than some people. I'll be kind to myself and call it contemplation rather than obsession.

This, ah, contemplation picked up serious intensity after I turned thirty; within the space of about eighteen months, our first child was born and my father died.

Now that my sixtieth birthday is only about sixteen issues of The New Yorker away, I wake up most mornings feeling like I spent the night falling through the floors of a house in slow motion. As I drive to work every weekday, I sometimes have to turn off the radio because the songs unleash too many memories and stir up a fierce longing for the past.

I'm not a complete fool; I get that this is something that's age-appropriate (to use the term my doctor uses to characterize my assorted chronic maladies. Fuck you too, Dr. Lee.).

The thing is, I already know what I need to maintain to keep from getting lost in the shadows: kindness, gratitude, and resilience. But I'd be lying if I told you that I don't lose the thread sometimes.

But then I find it again. Hey, look; resilience.