Decades

Time was a hook in his mouth. Time was reeling him in jawfirst; it was reeling him in, headlong and breathless, to a shore he had not known was there.
    — Annie Dillard —

And as we are dragged with ever-increasing speed and decreasing resistance toward the unknown beach through the shallows of a new decade, we are moving so fast now that the beginning of the new millennium 20 years ago is lost in the cavitating shock-wave of our passing and yet seems only yesterday. So, it's time to look back and see what we've done.

Eh.  Not much, it seems.

I suspect this is mostly because of the stabilizing effect of the Beneficiary, the anchor and stake around which my life revolves once all is said and done. My path is wide, wild, unpredictable, and constantly surprising, at least to me. She is the sun and I am sometimes staid Mercury, always close, always facing home, or, as often, a comet, long absent, curving in from the freezing dark with hair afire -- but always captive to her. I'd have long since been lost in the trackless wastes without her gently damping out my excesses and pulling me back home, no matter how far I wander, how strange my trip. And that's pretty much all there is, but that would be a disappointingly short post. So I shall expand:

I have what-still-seems a new job that's now so old I'm soon to retire from it, and have retired from the job before that, and would have retired from the two jobs before THAT had I not been a not-very-bright wastrel who always assumed I wouldn't live this long anyhow. (pfft) It's fine. No regrets — it's enough, and enough is enough. I've always done pretty much whatever suited me, much of it stuff practically no one else has done, and that's worth a couple of retirements, or at least that's my internal dialog.

I have seven what-still-seems new grandchildren, four of whom are for all practical purposes grown, all of whom have never spent a day of their lives when we were not at war. None of whom have ever spent a day without everything they ever needed and more. All of whom think the sun rises and sets on The Beneficiary and, to a lesser degree, me. They were worth doing if not another thing in my life was.

I lost my oldest son to disease and circumstance. Over these blindingly short 20 years we had early hopes, many disappointments, and in the end we were there holding his hand as he died, and stood together hip-deep in the cold water as we sent his ashes home.

Most of the crews who started out the millennium with me, hale and hearty and immortal men and women are long since gone. I occasionally write of their late-night visitations, and miss them, but it's becoming more and more abstract the closer I get to joining them. I suspect this is related to a conversation I had with someone who pointed out that older people generally spend less time worrying than younger ones. His theory was that worry, on the whole, is concern for possible future events occurring and that old people therefore have quantitatively less to worry about.

Sounds about right, although I pointed out to him that I've already outlived large wads of much younger people and almost certainly will outlive even more of them, so all their angst was for nothing. Now he worries about that. I suspect this conversation was his first brush with the concept that he's not only not immortal, but is pretty fragile in all kinds of ways. That's what ya' get when you try to aggravate me, kid. Now get off my lawn.

And me specifically? I imagine I have changed in the last 20 years, although for the life of me, I don't see it from in here. The view from inside the corpse seems to be pretty much the same as the view from inside the 30- 40- or 50-year-old. Or the 25-year old, for that matter.

Oh, that reminds me, if I didn't mention it, I got old. There's that. It's not all that important, as I generally don't notice it unless I'm being cruelly abused by some hot young thing (e.g., under 50 or so) who who laughs, or occasionally says "eww" at my dusty, creaking appreciation of her charms. I am probably becoming the embarrassing uncle at the family gatherings that you don't want to introduce your new girlfriend to. Heh. Made myself grin.

I suppose there's more, but the fact of the matter is I'm mostly astonished that all 20 years of it seems to have crowded itself into about 2 weeks. If it keeps accelerating at this rate, I'll be posting my next 20-year marker in about 72 hours. 'Course, it will probably be from my online storage avatar as by then this version of me will probably have been killed after being caught in the act by a jealous 25-year-old husband.

Hey. A man can dream.