Year 24

Cons-You don't yet have the satisfaction of knowing that your pest control guy caught his first squirrel today. One down!

Con-Looking back at the pictures from Yellowstone you're wearing a pair of knee braces. The decline really started at 23.

Con-In this year you were about to leave the land of everlasting summer. At least now you know things are going to suck, weather wise, for the foreseeable future. Twenty four year old Andrew doesn't know that. That dumb bastard.

Pro-You still lived for part of the year in the land of everlasting summer.

Pro-You are just starting your mid-twenties (24,25,26 and maybe 27), which makes you infinitely more mature than an uninitiated 21 year old, but hipper than an aging 27er.

Pro-You owned a surfboard. And yeah, you didn't actually ever use it, but you had one and you could have used it.

Pro-You're old enough that people will take you seriously when you talk about your job, but still young enough to believe that some job out there is really going to fulfill you some day!

It's strange to look back on this year. At the time it didn't seem special, just another year. When you flip the pages in an old album you now think of this as the year of leaving. You'd lived in Santa Barbara for six years. You'd been a part nearly every day of all the kids at your daycare.

This is also the year that you had to make your first big decision as a couple. Looking back on that now you probably should have known that buying a house together wouldn't be easy.
This is the place that you left behind.


At some point in your life someone will tell you that the most fun years in their marriage were living in a small apartment and eating pasta every night for dinner. These people are suffering what we call a delusion. It is not easy to go from living in your space to suddenly sharing everything in a 500 square foot studio. Luckily, it's a smaller space so you don't have to fill it with as much love. I was not sorry to say goodbye to our little cold studio and our dog hair filled couch.



However, I was sad to say goodbye to the two block walk to the beach, to the harbor seals that gathered in the early morning, to the bits of tar that bubbled up from the beach, to the brilliant sunsets or the evenings where everything was blue.








In this year you go to Yellowstone National Park. You haven't been on a vacation in years. At some point during the trip a family member reads a statistic (obviously I'm just guessing here as all statistics are made up on the spot) that only 20 percent of people who visit the park actually get out of their cars. You remember all the collective scoffing that you did. Then, you hiked up to Bunsen Peak. Later you learned that people had sighted a Grizzly Bear a couple of miles away. Allegedly of course, people at National Parks are worse than crazy people looking at UFO's.

You listened to this song first in 1997 but in this year you discovered that S loved it as well when it randomly played on the radio.

">

Later you take a long hike around a canyon and then back into the woods. There an enormous buffalo bars your trail and you all scramble into the underbrush and hide. Mentally, you're certain that something is wrong with a 24 year old male who can't just grab the nearest rock and brain the buffalo. You love the word brain.

Later you all hike by a picturesque mountain with a lake casting its reflection back at it. On the way back you discover that a black bear was walking down the trail towards your oncoming voices from scared people in locked cars.

And, your closest moment to true danger happened when you were all hiking on a ridge top and noticed that everyone's hair was standing on end and that black clouds were looming.



What you learned at twenty four is that no one should ever get out of their car at Yellowstone. Hell, you're twenty four. You've got too many good years ahead of you to be gored by a bison or eaten by a bear or struck by lightning. Just stay in your car.

The decision is about where S will attend grad school. It's probably best to describe her process as compared to mine via analogy. You think that most of life's problems could be solved if people would just use analogies more frequently.If S was a cougar she'd circle an antelope, then circle it again, then again, and again, and again, and again, and again, until the poor thing finally passed out from heat exhaustion or boredom. In the same situation I'd jump out of the nearest shrubbery and attempt to decapitate it in two seconds. And maybe it would get away but at least it would be over with. And as wise philosophers have always said, "life is about getting it over with."



She finally settles on the University of Michigan after several bouts of crying as you make long drives up the lovely CA coast. You say goodbye to the oil tankers twinkling in the distance, to the dark sea, to the palm trees and sand. You say goodbye to CA, the only state that you've ever lived in. You say goodbye to the tiny cramped studio that the two of you shared for the first year of your marriage. You say goodbye to sunsets and rain falling softly into the sea. You say goodbye to your hair being blond and long. You say goodbye to that solitary tree gnarled tree that stood at the edge of the cliffs peering out over the ocean like some ancient light house. You say goodbye to the harbor seals that you've watched grow from little pups to juveniles. You say goodbye to your wet suits. Goodbye to the place that you met.

Goodbye to that old blue car who's windshield you cracked with your useless surfboard. You say goodbye to the place where you had your first fight as a married couple, goodbye to that overpriced 30 dollar couch. You say goodbye to year round sandals. You say goodbye to so many things that you will never get back. You say goodbye to the children, some of whom you almost consider your own.


You say goodbye to Riley, the little boy who you hoped your child would one day look like.

You say goodbye to Katie (left) a little girl who you exchanged letters with for the next four years.


You said goodbye to the first year of marriage and everlasting blue skies. You said goodbye to another year and headed on towards twenty five in a cold place where the snow piled high.

Elegy for a silk tree

Afterward, you drive to the mall with your girlfriend. The sun is low and the buildings by the freeway are flat and grey. Birds dot telephone wires along the way, waiting for something to get run over. The mall’s shops all looked analogous to one another, box shaped stores with different letters on the faux terra cotta exteriors. The parking lot seems to stretch on for miles without any discernible use, a stray white cup, a gum wrapper, a depression that collects water. Every so often, one of the spots has a cement planter in front of it, and a small tree, skeletal and bare, held up it seems by a thin green post, planted and yet looking almost dead. You park in a spot close to the entrance. The weather is biting and cold. You have a hand on the creamy thigh of your first girlfriend. As you slide your hand up, the hem of her dress lifts, you see the color of her underwear and are nearly overcome with lust. You cannot imagine ever being alone.