Nico (left) and Christopher enjoying lunch that dad brought to them during "lunch with your kids" at school.
April 25, 2016
Slow the hell down, life. Thank you, I'd really appreciate it. I figured you out, and now you want to excel yourself through the second half of my life. This is just one request for now, so back off! Let me enjoy the corrections I made from my past mistakes in the first half of my life while I excel in something better in my second half. You know what I mean, life? I should be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor.
I know I'm getting old, and I don't need to look at my aging face in a mirror or hear a happy birthday song sung by a bunch of Chili's employees as a reminder. However, I will enjoy my chocolate syrup-covered vanilla ice cream. It is sad to see icons I watched growing up dying. Their death reminds me that time waits for no one. People like Prince and David Bowie, Shandling. I'm still reeling from the death of Michael Jackson, and that was in 2009. But man, did those deaths make me feel old.
When I was a kid, Bob Hope and George Burns were the ones dying, and well, hell, they were old, they looked old, and I was selfishly young. But when icons die young, way before their time, it's pretty clear that my own mortality is creeping in, as it's waving at me in a grim reaper-like way.
And this simple request, life, to slow down isn't just a personal self-loathing thing because now your dwindling time affects my parents, who are the older generation. I didn't understand that older generation when I was a kid, but now I know their age's implications and what is at stake when we get older. Health is the main thing to be grateful for.
My parents are now my kids' grandparents, and I'm now the grateful child who became my parents. Sometimes, I wish to rebel against the machine as Andrew Clark once fretted, "My God, are we going to be like our parents?" The Breakfast Club is more prevalent now that I'm in middle age because I still want to rebel and live in the moment of the defiant hell-raiser or just be "the brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal." I want to enjoy my own kids and selfishly maximize my full potential while those around me prosper in good health.
I'm grateful to be where I am at this point in this life; trust me, I'm not ungrateful. I'm feeling comfortable in my skin, and I'm afraid this feeling isn't going to last. But losing my wife and twin daughters isn't the main reason for feeling this way. I remember my forty-year-old uncle was diagnosed with cancer, and I was half his age. That feels like a lifetime ago. It's mind-boggling to think about him and remember how I hugged him and told him he'd win this battle only to succumb to it 5 years later. I'm 5 years away from his age of death and 2 decades older when he first told me! I remember like it was yesterday; my dad, being so active, held down two jobs and still raised 4 kids. My God, how young he was. But now he's 70 and slowing down. I noticed that I was nearing the age when John Candy died. Didn't I see Planes, Trains, and Automobiles while still wearing Underoos?
I have many things I want to accomplish. Hopefully, I will have an entire lifetime ahead to figure them out. First, I will hold my 6 and 8-year-old kids in my arms while I watch television because I still can and they still want to. I will take my boys to the store with me because right now, they would rather be near me than anywhere else. I don't want to stop learning or dreaming. I want to see the rainfall and appreciate it. I want to shiver from the cold and enjoy the moment I warm up. I want to accomplish the impossible, look back, and laugh when I doubted myself when I felt that I couldn't do it.
Minute by minute is how I live my life now. I promise you, life, I will run my opportunities close to the edge of time while they slowly move to the tick-tock of the passing days. Let us all live and enjoy the fruits of our labor. Don't sweat the shit you can't control. Move with time, not against it. Live in your moment now, not on what could happen. Go get a tattoo if you desire. Be an actor or a writer if you so choose, even if you think age has passed you by. Buy a new car or get a computer that you dreamt of. Just live in the minute because the next one may never come.
P.S. Live and let live.
Captain Imperfecto rocking a University of Florida shirt. (April 2016)
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