It seems like just yesterday that I was only 4 years old, and I can vividly remember a summer afternoon which led me to trip and fall while playing in the gravel driveway. A stone pierced the skin on my knee and the blood quickly found its way out of me. I panicked as a red line was drawn, from my knee, closer and closer to my striped sock. Mom, like a pro, helped me inside, sat me on the kitchen counter, sprayed the wound with some first aid kit stuff and, within seconds, magically healed my horrendously maimed limb back to the way it had always looked. My tears dried up, but the damage was done. I remember staring into my tiny bandaged wound as if it were a black mirror and a future of imminent gouges, scars, torn tissues, and drawn blood flashed before my eyes. I do remember it so well. I was immediately aware that this would happen again. I would fall, I would cry, I would be damaged, and I would be faced with physical pain many times over. That single trail of blood found its way down my leg as if to draw a timeline that was at the time yet to be marked off by any significant events. In that profoundly prescient moment it was clear that those days, those horrors were going to be unavoidable. I accepted it... or forgot about it once I got my hands on some Legos...
That bright red time line has certainly reappeared many times in 30 years, each time documenting a new momentous occasion. The line is rarely straight these days and it often branches off violently in many directions. Sometimes it really is as gory and painful as it appears to be, and sometimes I can get away with spraying it with that magic first aid stuff and it goes away with no tears. I still often stare into the wounds and the wounds still stare back; However, these days I'm not looking into an abyss of terror presented to me by some stranger. No, the blood and pain and I have almost become close friends, and we would almost look forward to seeing each other if the encounters weren't so random and typically inconvenient. We've shared and survived many close calls in this lifetime and we've accepted that there is no way to be more prepared.
So onward through 2011, and may it kick our asses so that we may outlive any of those threats that we feared when we were younger. We can't allow ourselves to be bullied by our own doubts and we certainly shouldn't fear death, but we can have respect and patience for the unruliness of time. Cheers.
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