Here I am

   I was thirty when I decided to try doing some personal writing on a sustained basis.  Why it happened then had something to do with buying our first personal computer and reading John Cheever’s journals, which was the sort of writing (the type, not his quality) that was running through my head.  Coincidentally, I had read not so long before a piece of advice, or maybe warning, from some famous writer that one should not try to write anything until at least the age of thirty.  And there I was. 

   The wisdom of waiting to thirty, I suppose, is that before then you haven’t lived enough, or gathered enough perspective, to make any damn sense.  The problem with waiting to thirty is that you don’t get all the juvenile writing out of your system as an adolescent.   And so I had thirty years of life on this earth, and as a writer I was going on twelve.

   Then I wrote some, but not enough, as kids and work and softball and fishing and travel and all the other stuff of life asserted their own priorities, and now I am here.  Nearly fifty years old, with five electronic volumes of pieces I have written.  Some that seem good to me.  Some not so much. 

   Now my oldest will be off to college in a few months, with her sister just three short years behind.  More time for writing seems close, like a clearing in the woods just up ahead.  But I will miss the deep woods, too.     

    At some point I finally told my wife about the little bit of writing that I was doing.  I told her nothing was finished, of course, and that it was all just for myself.  She said, matter of factly, “I guess I'll have to get this published when you die.”  
    Can you imagine this, some woman saying this incredible thing to you, without even looking up?

(2011)