From ages 0-20, the springtime of my life, I spring into being, growing from a puling, helpless babe over two decades into a brash, sensitive young man. Early spring’s violent emotional storms batter my tender shoots. I grow as best I can. In the rocky soil of my family garden, my eyes scan the sky for sunlight my leaves can capture, just as my roots reach out for nutrients into surrounding soil. I draw knowledge and an emerging sense of self from the books in my parents’ library, the fundamentalist story of God’s plan for me, the normalcy and righteousness of public school progress, and American media–especially Top 40 radio, TV, and the movies.
Certain core traits that will persist in my next seasons bud forth. Appearing are my curiosity, sensitivity, susceptibility to depression and addiction, competitiveness, deep desire to belong, and my love of artistic expression, especially music and visual arts. My talents grow un-cultivated out of this particular terroir, and I develop them as I am able, compounding them into my shaky identity.
In the long days of the summer of my life (ages 20-40), I flourish. I find a mate, enter my peak vitality, and fruit in ways that add value to society. After launching three offspring, I organize my life around their care and maintenance.
Not blessed with the best weather or the most nutrient-dense soil, my life nonetheless draws sustenance from hidden sources: my idealism, my work ethic, and a small circle of friends.
Under summer’s bright sun, unpleasant truths lie exposed. I see with sadness my mate’s growth vining toward lights I can not see, lights inimical, I conclude, to mine. For me, the strange part of beauty has always compelled me forward. She, on her side, refuses adventures with the kids and me, preferring familiar ease, and though I seek common ground, I am disappointed. We separate and divorce right at “summer’s end,” near my 40th birthday.
My autumn, from 40-60, is a time for harvest, for cooling down, for taking stock and taking in, for reflecting and “transcending,” and for reckoning with entropy’s tightening grip. Managing my own garden post-marriage, I draw from richer soils and brighter suns. No surprise that my fruiting is prolific. With the help of anti-depressants and therapy, I have competence enough to advance in my job and confidence enough to return to the dating pool via the first online dating sites.
Grown and on their own, my children don’t need as much support, so I branch into music and art, and eventually, near the end of this period, into another intimate relationship. I meet and after five years, wed my second wife–this one my partner, not in reproduction, but in healing and collaboration.
In winter’s scant light, the barren landscape features skeleton trees against the open, grey sky, an essential beauty abides as everything settles.
My winter companion and I now hunker down to weather the coming cold and quiet. Our days may dwindle, but they increase in value proportionately, depending on how we view them.
May our lives’ experience, distilled and shared, be a blessing to those we leave behind. May love’s heat sustain us as this life shrinks and we give away, and we let go, our identities ever more transparent, like last summer’s leaves, transmuted under the snow into next spring’s compost.
The Wikiness 
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