Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes —

Some have got broken — and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.

I remember the first time the instructions to have a great time were interrupted.

Pleasure is complicated, and we need more and more practice at it.

Oh lay me down in Forest Lawn in a silver casket.

Put golden flowers over my head in a silver basket.  .  .  .

Beneath all these disasters is the looming suspicion that things may not, in fact, get better.

The first time I saw him he was walking toward me, jaw clenched, his eyes unkind. I was a ten-year-old little boy, and he frightened me.

Why Am I Here? My answer to this question may not be at all like yours, but here is what works for me.

On a Thursday early in August, I woke at dawn from a dream I couldn’t remember but realized must have come from deep in the mausoleum of my memory, a forgotten crypt from which two former friends, neither of whom I’d seen nor spoken with in forty years, rose like zombies and shambled into my first conscious thought. Before I was fully awake, I whispered into my pillow, so not to disturb my sleeping wife: I hate these guys.

Every thoughtful adult knows there are times when it’s necessary to lie. I’ve spent the decade since she said this trying to figure out how to distinguish lies from the truth, and how to determine when telling the truth is the wrong thing to do.

What I remember is not her voice or the remainder of the story, but how I felt leaning against her as she read: safe and cherished. This nightly ritual of reading is laid at the base of my history with her, and with books, forms a foundational piece of who I am.

I’ve been thinking about the privileges I have as a straight, white, affluent, Protestant, male.

When the anthem plays, or when I’m invited to join in the pledge of allegiance, the patriot in me stands at attention while the liberal social activist resists saluting what has been such a conflicted symbol throughout my adult life. But recently I had a moment when I was filled with patriotic joy, honored the flag without hesitation, and cried through my experience of uncluttered patriotism.

Eighty is the new 80. I can’t lie to myself about my age, nor buy into the frivolous notion that 80 is just a number and somehow the years have not taken their toll on me. I know that more and more of us are living well into our eighties, nineties, and beyond. I’m thankful to be on the cusp of joining this motley crew.

I said, It feels like you’re emotionally still married to him. That you haven’t let go of the pain of his leaving, even this many years later. She stared at me as if I’d crossed a boundary, spoken some unspeakable truth. I watched her eyes signal that she had left the conversation long before the hour ended.

She never came back.

When Jesse was a college junior, he told us he wanted to find his natural mother. So we handed him the file we’d developed when we adopted him twenty years earlier, and over the next several nights watched as he flipped through the pages of his personal history, filling in gaps in the stories we’d told him since we first talked with him about his adoption.

When I think about how I was raised, I naturally focus on my own experience as my parents’ child. But to more fully understand my childhood, it’s also important to understand the personal and social forces that bruised, blessed, and thereby sculpted my parents, all of which affected how they loved me - or didn't.

When I became a psychotherapist, I discovered, ever so slowly, that what works with children works with adults as well - except in this case it was my fear that I needed to deal with.

I sometimes operate with the delusional notion that if I intellectually master my circumstances, I can control them; if I reduce the world to what is reasonable, I will protect myself from those uneasy mysteries that are beyond reason.

It’s a rare experience to have a friend who is endlessly interested in you, who keeps urging, Tell me more. Talking honestly and listening carefully with insatiable curiosity: it’s the call-and-response sacrament at the core of our conversations.