I just finished the book Water for Elephants. It wasn't my favorite book in the world (and there are parts that need to be skipped), but it was fascinating and I have found myself thinking about it now that I've finished. It is told from the perspective of an old man, 90 or 93, he can't remember which. It's partly a vivid look at the challenges of aging, in addition to a tale of love and the circus. At the end, he is thinking back about the years when his family was young and his career as a veterinarian was getting started:
"Those were the salad days, the halcyon years! The sleepless nights, the wailing babies; the days the interior of the house looked like it had been hit by a hurricane; the times i had five kids, a chimpanzee, and a wife in bed with fever. Even when the fourth glass of milk got spilled in a single night, or the shrill screeching threatened to split my skull, or when I was bailing out some son or other...from a minor predicament at the police station, they were good years, grand years.
But it all zipped by. One minute my wife and I were in it up to our eyeballs, and next thing we knew the kids were borrowing the car and fleeing the coop for college. And now, here I am. In my nineties and alone."
I am guilty of sometimes wishing this stage of my life away. Wishing I could sit in the shade and read instead of responding to cries of "My want a underdog!" Wishing we could ever find 2 matching shoes. Wishing I spent less time on other people's bodily functions. Wishing the floor wasn't covered with an entire meal's worth of food every time we get up from the table.
When my head is pounding and I am overwhelmed by the insane mess that covers our house most of the time, I am trying to remind myself that these are the salad days, the halcyon years, and that when they are over I just might wish I could do it all again.
