With today’s, if I arrive, because I write these lines yesterday and no one has lived tomorrow, I have been wandering through this valley of laughter and tears for 14 days, February 29. A time like any other to take stock of the damage. Of my first two or three leap years, those of my earliest childhood, I only remember the good because, although there were surely also bad ones, I had two lightning rods called dad and mom to prevent me from doing so. Of the last two or three, those at the zenith of middle age, I tend, however, to retain the bad, perhaps because, although there have also been many very good times, I have had to go through the worst ones bareback. Of those in the middle—that roller coaster of illusions and disappointments, loves and breakups, ecstasies and ordeals that we call life—I have to make efforts to rescue from the tidal wave other imperishable flashes, in addition to those of the birth of my daughters and the death of my parents. That’s how quickly the story goes by when you’re living it.
So, now that the anniversary of my first 14 leap years has arrived, I struggle, days and times, during the day, between the urge to take on the world and the depression of knowing that I turned my back on the ham a long time ago. It must be that unconscious awareness of being on the front line of the funeral home that overwhelms so many of our contemporaries. Because let’s be realistic without being ashy. With her little filly, my genetic history and the life expectancy statistics in hand, I can have how many four-year terms left?: five? six? Ten, God forbid? Let’s not anticipate events. Let’s go day by day, like Rambo. While others have scheduled and paid for their funeral, I continue paying for the gym without going because on Monday I start without fail, I continue without opening the mailbox in case there is an order for immediate entry into prison without bail and I live with the paintings to be hung leaning on the floor since the last move, a quarter of a century ago. Until next February 29. Maybe then I have made progress in the effort to learn to live for myself and not let life live me. Illustrious.
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