“Age is a scary thing.” Noel leans by the window, watching our son and dog run around the yard below. “It’s there all your life, but it just leaps at ya, doesn’t it? When you least expect it.”

I sit a little away on the swivel chair, pen idly doodling the sketchpad. “Whaddya mean?”

“I don’t know… I just think of it a lot.” A sigh. “Christ, I was sixteen sixteen years ago! I thought about homework, guitar, other guys. Didn’t even consider the thought of tax returns and driver’s insurance. What is this? When did we sink into the bog of banality? I wanted to be younger longer, dammit.”

He shakes a fist in mock indignation. The air conditioner vrrs and dampens his voice a bit. 

“Here we are now. A little older and a little quieter. Settled, maybe. Isn’t that crazy?”

I agree, but I stay quiet as I always do. He’ll work his way through his ponderings and conclusions. He goes on. 

“There’s just these patterns. There aren’t actions, there are patterns. The pattern of waking up. The pattern of the commute. The pattern of a quick dinner, the pattern of the Friday night restaurant. Ingrained in our beings to live those patterns. And that’s fine. It helps us survive in this world.” Outside, our son laughs his bright peeling laughs. “Like the caress of a mother. It was comforting. But then you realize how much you’re missing. Everything you could do that you never will. You feel… frustrated.”

He looks towards me now, though I pretend to be absorbed in the circle I’m digging into the page. “Frustrated how?” I say regardless.

“Don’t give me that, man. You know how. In that way that pops into your head 3 PM on a Friday, the kind that sticks in your head and you can’t get all the splinters rid in you. The kind that, deep down, makes you worry that you’ve lived right. ‘It’s not real!’ you yell to yourself. I know it isn’t! But what are words to the mind? It’s doubt that soaks into your bloodstream and makes you just that more jumpy. Throws your patterns off.”

His sharpness subdues me. He’s quiet for a little. “I know it’s been different with Joey around,” I say. “But he loves us and so do–”

“Christ, Clance! This isn’t about Joey!” He looks regretful instantly. “No–no, it is about him. But just as much it’s about me. You know the stuff with my band isn’t great. Not since Randy. Things that could’ve panned out but didn’t. I think I wish I should’ve slowed down a bit, taken my time. Been more patient.”

“Hey. You were always patient with me. I tell you that every day.” I scooter back in the chair to him and place a hand on his shoulder. ”There’s plenty of things we wish we could change. But what’s the point? Might as well ask to turn water into wine. You’ve gotten this far, and you’ve done better than most.”

He sits there and stews in embarrassment from his slipped remark and pampering by my flattery.

“I just wish he’d asked sooner…”

At last he sighs.

“I have. I have you. I have lil’ Joey. I’ll be alright.” He smiles at me shyly. “I won’t talk about it anymore. I won’t worry about getting old.”

He says this, but I know it’ll linger in his mind for another two days, clouding the edge of his judgment. And then, like a dream, it will fly away for a while.

Maybe one day I’ll let him continue. Let him admit to himself what he knows we both know. And come to a conclusion that must be true. But by then it will be too late. That ship will have already set.

And by then we would’ve already led a happy life.