When the Confiteor becomes an earworm

“Oh, very young, what will you leave us this time? You’re only dancing on this earth a short while…” Yusuf Islam, AKA Cat Stevens

My second grade crush just celebrated her seventieth birthday.

I guess celebrate is the right word. It’s funny how, shortly after hitting 21, the fun starts going out of birthdays. Then, once we get in the vicinity of that biblical three score and ten, marking that annual trip around the sun becomes more and more a notable occasion … it comes with the realization we only have so many left…

It's been a long time since pencil boxes and color crayons. Even if it doesn’t seem all that long. I guess, maybe, that’s what memories are for?

But it’s remarkable, when I think of it. She and I’ve been together for more than 60 years now – OK, not that close together, but close enough to get together now and again, spend some time and remember when. It’s good to have company on this time traveler’s excursion we think of as life…someone who was there when and where I was.

Because, if no on was there, how can I be sure I was there either?

Autumn brings on autumn thoughts. The Confiteor becomes an earworm: “…what I have done and what I have failed to do…” If she’s 70 and we were in the same second grade class, well, that must mean I…

Not yet. But certainly not by decades, or even by years.  Time is inexorable and I’m keeping up with it. Autumn comes to all of us.

The sunlight is rich and golden today. The air fills my lungs, crisp, full of life, and the world is a very good place to be.

Even so, I feel a chill. The exuberance of spring and the lush days of summer are left to falling leaves and a rich harvest stored away in memory. Another, darker, season will soon be upon us.

Imagination strains at that. How hard to think of the world without me in it. It’s Fear Of Missing Out on a cosmic scale. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be there to see the sun go nova? Spectacular! So much yet to happen. So little time yet to be.

Best make good use of it.

Better than I’ve…we’ve…been making.

I’m glad my grandkids are still too young to realize what a mess I and the other kids in that second grade class are leaving for them. We were born into a pretty wonderful world, but we’ve surely botched it up.

On our watch, just in the years since we got out of high school, two-thirds of the world’s wild critters have vanished. Hundreds of whole species, gone forever. We’ve filled the open spaces with buildings and filled the buildings with people and junk. We have more stuff laying around than we can use and our houses can hold, but more stuff, more stuff – economic growth – is our god above all others. Enough is never enough, but we don’t know why.

The world’s getting hotter along with our tempers. Politics verges on blood sport as compromise becomes one more word the woke cannot tolerate and their adversaries cannot stand. The Age of Aquarius is drowning in animosity and rising sea levels.

Yet, to our credit, despite bulging nuclear arsenals across the globe, we have managed not to blow ourselves back to the Paleocene. We have arguably better stuff than we had when everyone still liked Ike, and comedy is better with Jeff Foxworthy and Dave Chappelle than the likes of Henny Youngman.

But, on balance, we have a lot to answer for. A lot of ‘splainin’ to do.

Or we can knuckle down, buckle down and do something about it.

We ain’t dead yet and, at this point, have damn little to lose. Less and less with every day that passes. At the very least we can speak the truth, call out the liars and do what we can to make up for “what we have done, and what w have failed to do.” That’ll make every birthday something to celebrate.