This must be the place: ‘I’m young in eternity, I’m old in my father’s face’
Snapped at a lounge in Toronto, Canada. Garret K. Woodward photo
I woke up this morning with this heavy feeling of how fast time is moving. I mean, in essence, time doesn’t exist and everything is all one moment. But, I still see those increasing grey hairs in my beard and well-earned laugh wrinkles in my face.
Regardless, the heaviness came from thinking about how far away some faces are in the rearview mirror, how fast the speedometer is tracking, how blurry and unknown the faces are on the horizon out the windshield of the vehicle of my intent, come hell or high water.
And I think of this quote I recently came across: “Remember, you haven’t yet met all the people in your life who’ll love you.” That sentiment has been rolling around in my head, all while the last whispers of winter are fading into the ether, the trees blossoming across the mountain ridge facing my humble abode apartment.
To that, there’s been a few things that the universe has thrown my way in the last couple of weeks that have made me question where I stand. I told my therapist last week that “I feel like the universe has it out for me right now.” To which, she replied stoically, “Well, maybe you should look at it as, ‘The universe is looking out for me.’”
And she’s right. Instead of being all hum-ho about how certain cards in your deck have fallen, why not see it as trusting the process? And realizing that when things shift and filter out of your daily life, then there’s room now created to manifest and cultivate your true self and every beautiful person, place or thing that may encompass.
Which just reminded me of something a buddy of mine said, “It’s not about the cards you’re dealt, it’s about how well you play your hand.” True that, my brother. True that. Just when you feel like folding and asking for another hand from the card dealer (God, the universe, whatever), usually something crosses your path and reminds you just how lucky you are to be alive and present in this current reality.
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As I continue down the rabbit hole of weekly online therapy sessions, I find myself also traversing down Memory Lane. Peeling back the layers of my youth and young adulthood, it’s been this journey into the far reaches of my mind. Those images, interactions and interpretations of elementary, middle and high school. College chaos. Early 20s missteps. Still more missteps in your 30s. Step into your 40s with heartache, a pile of bills and a BetterHelp.com subscription.
No matter, for your life and every single thing in it is, well, “one thing,” you know? The journey is never over. The quest for your true self will remain until the last moment you’re awake on this earth. I think of that quote from Keith Richards, guitarist for The Rolling Stones, in the documentary “Under the Influence”: “You’re not grown up until the day they put you six feet under. You’re never grown up.”
Later in that same film, Richards goes, “Life’s a funny thing. Nobody wants to get old, but they don’t want to die young, either.” And just as I’m typing this, “Drive” from rock act Incubus echoes through the headphones. I remember vividly when that song hit the airwaves in 2000/2001. Back then, I was a teenager and thought I already knew everything, or at least how everything might unfold. Funny, eh?
And I remember the exact first time I heard “Drive.” It was the morning after a house party at my best buddy Tom’s house. To preface, I grew up in Rouses Point, New York, on the Canadian Border along Lake Champlain. Tom lived right over the bridge in Isle La Motte, Vermont, a tiny island in the middle of the lake. This was the middle of winter, so the landscape was covered in snow and ice.
I woke up on a recliner in Tom’s living room. A slight headache and cottonmouth from the booze and cigarettes. “Drive” was on MTV in the corner, the number soaking into my body and soul. To note, Tom’s parents were gone for the weekend, so, of course, we called up all our riffraff cronies and invited them over for Saturday night shenanigans. Don’t forget: BYOB. Extra points for stolen liquor from your parents’ cabinet.
By nightfall, streams of headlights poured down the old, desolate farm road to the house. Beer pong and card games. Stereo blasting the local rock station 99.9 WBTZ. Labatt Blue beer bottles shoved into the snowbanks outside. Tom’s dog wandering around the rooms. And all of those once-familiar faces talking to you, talking to everyone else. Faces you’d date later in life, others you still keep in touch with.
Those once-familiar faces are parents themselves now, many of which having teenage kids of their own as we speak. They’re teachers and law enforcement officers, insurance and car salesmen, small business owners and doctors. Some are still MIA, seeing as once we graduated high school, certain folks just wanted to get the heck out of our cow town and run for the nearest major city or furthest state on the map.
And here I sit in a coffee shop in Waynesville, North Carolina, just about 1,100 miles from my hometown. And 18-hour or so drive (depending on traffic) door-to-door to my parents’ farmhouse. Tom and I are still in cahoots, thankfully. I haven’t called Rouses Point home in 22 years. Lots of physical and emotional miles between that starting line and my current position. Some 13 years here at the newspaper, too. The work remains bountiful. Gratitude remains.
The sunshine warms my face exiting the coffee shop to answer a phone call. I again notice the nearby trees and all the new leaves each is sprouting. I think of all of the heavy, emotional baggage I left on the side of the road this past winter. And I think of the endless possibilities in the “here and now” of spring, and what else might just be happily waiting around the corner to surprise me this year.
Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.
