When a man turns 60 you would think he’d look back on his life and all that he’s done and see the miracles that he’s performed. All the good that has happened and what wonders exist in the world. I looked at my life until now and was amazed at the fact that I’ve never had to ask anyone to look after me. Through cancer, through recovery, through it all, I took care of myself. I’ve never had to ask for a handout, raised a daughter as best as I could and yet, here I am, at 60. Who knows what 61 or 62 or more brings but today, I’m 60. When I was 50 I had a similar experience thinking half-a-century and I should have those that loved me around me, but that wasn’t the case. This isn’t a tale of woe or bitterness, just reconciliation. You take stock in the things that you have and you make sure that what you need is what you deserve. As the line goes, “the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones”. I miss many things I should have said and done. I miss the hugs I didn’t give or take. The moments I should have been more present. The people I should have appreciated more than I did. Yet, I did what I did because I was who I was. I am different in this moment than I was then. Love isn’t something to be squandered because you think you can figure it out tomorrow. Tomorrow, as the expression goes, will take care of itself. Today is what matters today.

Once upon a time there was a little bunny. He was quite like other bunnies, he had a furiously white cottony tail and a squinkily small and pink furry nose. His name was Squiggilywink Bunny. He lived in a hole deep in the woods. His hole was quite nice. It was laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge and rooooooooooooouuuuuuuuunnnnnnndddd. Much larger and rounder and wider than other bunnies’ holes. Squiggilywink Bunny loved his hole and spent many hours in it, moving things from the far side to the other or rearranging things in his hole and admiring how they looked from all the different angles.

He would move his cotton comfy chair he had found one day in his travels in the forest and dragged home to his hole. He would put it in the middle of the room, and admire it from all the angles. He would move the little hand mirror he used in the other corner near his cushily softy bed. Being a bunny a hand mirror was more than any bunny would ever need. He would play in his hole and watch the sun move across the floor and make shadows of things he left in its path as it came down his hole. Squiggilywink Bunny though, knew that no matter how much he moved his things around his hole something was always not right and he had to move them back again and sit down on the floor and sigh.

One morning, as Squiggilywink Bunny as he was returning to his hole he heard a noise coming from the furthest corner of his laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge and rooooooooooooouuuuuuuuunnnnnnndddd hole. Being a bunny, Squiggilywink Bunny was naturally nervous and bounded and bounced behind a tree. “Who could be my his hole?” He wondered aloud softly to himself. “Who would want to be down my hole?” he said once again. Finally, when he couldn’t hear another sound and he had waited quite a long time (or so he thought, but in fact it had been only a second, since for bunnies, a second is a long time) he peered down into his hole.

What he saw down his hole was something quite astonishing altogether. There, in his hole was a girl bunny. She was rearranging Squiggilywink Bunny’s furntire like he did when he was in his hole. Yet, something about the way she did it seemed so much nicer. Finally, Squiggilywink Bunny, being a curious bunny, hopped and flopped down into his hole. The girl bunny didn’t see him right away because she was busy admiring herself in the hand mirror. Which since she was a bunny too, was more than enough for her to admire herself in.

“Ahem”, said Squiggilywink Bunny. “Excuse me, Miss, can I help you?”
With that, the girl bunny bounced and flounced away behind his cushily softy bed and put her paws over her eyes and hid her head and shoookkkkk.

“What is the matter?” said Squiggilywink Bunny.
“Oh, you’ll be so mad at me for being down your hole.” said the girl bunny tinily.
“No, I am not mad.” said Squiggilywink Bunny smiling to show how unmad he was.

The girl bunny looked and peered from under one of her paws. Squiggilywink Bunny thought she looked so cute with only one of her pink little eyes looked up at him from behind his cushily softy bed.
“Are you sure you’re not mad?” she said a little more sure seeing Squiggilywink Bunny gringling at her.

“I like it.” said SquiggilyWink Bunny. “I like it quite a lot.” And he did. The girl bunny had moved the cotton comfy chair that he had found one day in his travels in the forest into the center of the room. She had put it just in front of the little hand mirror which she had also moved into the center of the hole. The room looked so much more happy thought Squiggilywink Bunny. “But, I have put the the little hand mirror and the cotton comfy chair many times in the middle of my hole to admire them, but they never looked this good.” he thought. “What could be different now?”

The girl bunny had bounced and sat down next to Squiggilywink Bunny and her flopsy tail lay next to his, hers just touching his slightly.

“I’m Sunbunny” said Sunbunny. “What are you looking at?” she asked quizzically. “I’m very sorry I moved her chair and mirror.” She said.

“It’s better.” said Squiggilywink Bunny. “It seems so much nicer in here than it did before.” said Squiggilywink Bunny. And turned around and looked behind him. No. That wasn’t it. The rest of his hole was very much the same. Nothing had changed and the the little hand mirror and cotton comfy chair he had seen in the middle of the hole before. Something was definitely different.

Finally, Squiggilywink Bunny looked at Sunbunny and saw what was different. It was her. She was different in his hole. She was white and speckled and her flopsy tail, right on the tip, was grey. “My,” thought Squiggilywink Bunny, “she is very pretty.” Squiggilywink Bunny knew that it was Sunbunny who was different in his hole and that he would like her to stay.

“Would you like some lettuce?” asked Squiggilywink Bunny.

Squiggilywink Bunny and Sunbunny shared some lettuce that day in his laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge and rooooooooooooouuuuuuuuunnnnnnndddd hole. They sat and talked and played and moved the cotton comfy chair and little hand mirror and admired the way they looked in it. Sunbunny stayed with Squiggilywink Bunny. She liked playing with him and decided that that was the best laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge and rooooooooooooouuuuuuuuunnnnnnndddd hole she had ever been in and wanted to stay with Squiggilywink Bunny.

There is this band that I’ve loved since I was a teenager. They have this songwriter who writes lyrics that could break your heart and make you laugh at the double entendres contained in them. He’s been struggling for quite some time now. There’s this old joke where a doctor asks a patient if he “suffers from depression” and the patient replies “no, I enjoy it very much”.

This isn’t a book review or a hype for a particular band but this band, their songs, they sustained me. They got me through college, through my first 20 years or so and now, they remind me of the “good times, the righteousness, the best parts of life” and yet they are not what they are now, the good times without so much of the righteousness.

It’s a thing that as we get older we tend to doubt ourselves, our past choices to have brought us to the juncture where we currently live and if we had made other choices. The infinite possibilities where might our lives be now? Would we be more successful, more renowned, less in debt, more in love, more beloved, less hated, more liked, less reviled, more kind, less apathetic? What parts of who we are now are the sum choices of picking a certain street to walk down rather than another, whether we’d gotten on that bus that day or smiled at a stranger?

How much of our lives are bound up in that momentary glance through a doorway a la Henry James that prompted him to write an entire novel? What about the glimpse of that woman’s skirt made us change our entire persona because zigged rather than zagged? What part of us is due to circumstance and what other parts are just plain dumb fucking luck?

How many of us have had the catch of their breath? The quickness of the heart, the beat that skips past the momentary reflection and we look in the mirror and say, what exactly happened here?

Ovid had so many rules in his treatise about love yet how many of them translate when we catch sight of the person that makes us wonder what we did to be so lucky that they smile at us? No rule can tell us that love, despite all the poems and songs and treatises and all the other nonsense that it is anything more than being helpless before someone who dissects our very nature and still accepts us as we are.

We are the sum of our parts, the parts of our past, and the unimaginable parts of our future, yet only those that love us can see all of that. Those that love us know us for who we are and yet still accept us despite our constraints.

How do you explain the quickness of breath and shallow heartbeat that makes us grateful to be alive and hoping, praying, wishing, asking, that they smile at us, just give us a nod and that secret look that we know means more than our last breath?

Love is easy. Except when you try to explain to someone else.

How many of us want to be remembered for more than what we think we are? The line from Shakespeare, “the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones” is something most people never think of because by the time we do, it won’t matter much any way.

We are the sum of what we do in our lives. What we are is a closely guarded secret. Despite pretending the moral acts of our time who we really are is only what we know. We may have a partner, a lover, a friend, only our pets know us for what we really are. They cannot communicate our sins because none of us (so far) speak their language.

I’m hoping to be remembered as a father first. I don’t know what shape that will take. I have, apparently so much to atone for that nothing I will ever do will make up for the trouble I have caused. Be not wary, gentle reader, everything has a context. I may have a different perspective than the world that judges me. Yet, my perspective will never have the last say.

When we are gone. After we are dust, who will tell our stories? What are our crimes? What are our foibles and sins? Who will we have affected and what effect on some worlds would we have had more than we could ever know?

We are the sum of our parts. We are the least of our pieces. The good is interred with our bones but the evil will live forever in the hearts of those that remember us.

Never underestimate the power of a picnic. Food, sun, grass, more sun, and a nap. Possibly a blanket. The food is key. It has to be something you like. Something you really cherish because it’s better than “regular” food. It’s the food that you can have indoors but there’s sun, grass, and let’s face it, more sun. There’s a book possibly. Even better with company that makes your heart sing and your loins ache. The moments don’t matter, it’s the minutes that do. You plan it, the food, the place, the particular spot, the day. You trek (possibly not even far) and you pick the spot. It can be mundane, it can be prosaic, it can completely only special to you but it’s yours.

The food is comforting and delicious, not because you packed it. Maybe you didn’t. It’s comforting and delicious because it’s a special occasion. Ever notice that food tastes better when it’s for a particular day? Cake is just cake until it’s “birthday” cake. Or bread is just bread until it’s a sandwich someone else made for you. An occasion is just a day until it’s a day you get to spend it with someone you look forward to more than any other day.

You do nothing. You talk, you gaze at clouds. They all look like something that should be discussed. In detail. With comparisons to why you think what you think they are is what they are. Nothing is ever arguable. It just is.

A nap. One of those glorious sun on the face, hat on the brow, warmth of the moment naps. You wake eventually and realize, life is calling. This was the moment you had and you were grateful to have it and yet, it’s not so much over as it is a pause until the next glorious day.

There is a movie by that same name about a monster that doesn’t want to exist. It has been around since the birth of the world and it has watched as man became the dominant species. It just wants to no longer exist. It points out in this movie that it only exists because it is what man fears most.

When you fear something, truly are afraid of something do you ever look directly at it? Is it like the SEP (someone else’s problem) of life that if you don’t look directly at it, then it probably can’t hurt you? So many things are not our problem that we look the other way when we walk by them. The homeless guy without feet on the cardboard home just outside the Starbucks, the children that are used as pawns to get you to donate money to a charity… All of those things that we should care about but we don’t or can’t because there’s just a lot more out there that we have to take care of for ourselves.

Does that make us bad people? Are we insensitive to the plight of those less fortunate or are we just human beings trying to get on with the day and the responsibilities we have to ourselves and those we love? Someone else will take care of that, someone else will definitely stop to help, someone else will… Yet, aren’t we that someone else?