Hello blogspot

Hello blogspot my old friend. I've come to chat with you again.

Yes, it's been two and a half years. Facebook pretty much wiped out the recreational blogosphere. If you are still blogging, you're probably getting--or hoping to get--some remuneration from it.

Why now? Maybe I'm in a nostalgic haze, augmented by the Simon & Garfunkel tapes that I listen to during the rare moments when the loose wire in my car speakers decides to reach out to whatever it's supposed to be connected to. When it's not working, I can repeat the recently heard songs in my head. Like right now. "Hello darkness, my old friend." When I first heard these lyrics in my teens, I thought, "You know, something new is happening, and I want to be a part of it."

Sure enough, a whole new culture was busting out, and I ran to join it. It had been a long time coming. Suddenly people were dressing like me, thinking like me, listening to the music I had listened to all my life.

Now, something's happening in my life once more. A sea change. I've let my hair grow long again, and people's heads are turned. Until they see the well-worn 67-year-old face in front of it. Then it's "Eww! An old lady." I guess I was the same when I was their age. You don't understand old age until you're old.

Yet old age is one of life's great adventures. Each day I learn something new. It's baked in the cake that most kids will waste their youth. But no one wastes their old age. Because by then the remaining years are precious.

And my father's death last week taught me that death is one more great adventure. You haven't really lived until you've experienced it. It's something to look forward to, not with dread but with wonder.