Read Elsewhere: Half a Life

From Half a Life by Darin Strauss:

"I'm surprising myself by grinning now, just recalling this. There's a pleasant, weird vibe you get from remembering a moment of early closeness with someone, in the time before you realized this closeness was going to become your life."

*****

"I find it an amazing stroke of luck to be married to (her). To be a parent with (her). That's the meter you come up with, as you approach forty. If your relationship fills you with a sense of luck, you've chosen well."

*****

"Things don't go away. They become you. There is no end, as T.S. Eliot somewhere says, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours. No freedom from the past, or from the future.

But we keep making our way, as we have to. We're all pretty much able to deal even with the worst that life can fire at us, if we simply admit that it is very difficult. I think that's the whole of the answer. We make our way, and effort and time give us cushion and dignity. And as we age, we're riding higher in the saddle, seeing more terrain.

So it's an epiphany after all. You have it in your hand the whole time."