50th

What does one think about on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his graduation from high school?
What things?
How many things?

It is early morning on the day of most of the festivities and we have a lot to do.

May is a busy month at The Study anyway: getting ready to open the Northern Camp; yard work with the coming of spring; and all the birthdays and other anniversaries which take place annually.

And this year, a 50th.

Thoughts, memories, bits of poetry.

I once stood behind Robert Frost as he read his poetry. I think of that occasionally, and now his poem about the roads diverging in a yellow wood comes to mind.

Or that line in Saving Private Ryan, where the character, Private Ryan, says something like… “Was it worth it [saving him] ?

We like to think that our life has been worth it; that it may still ‘be worth it’; that we will have worthwhile contributions to make.

You get one 50th.

We won’t go around again, not this lifetime anyway.

50 years have gone by quickly.

It occurred to me two days ago that in 1959, as I was getting to graduate and go on to college, that if a 50-year ‘boy’ had returned to visit us at the school, that the old timer would have graduated in 1909.

And I remember thinking in my late teen years that the early 1900’s was one hell of a long time ago, dark ages even, compared to the enlightened 1950’s.

And now here we/I am… one of the ‘old boys’, emerging out of the dark ages as it were, for the current members of the Class of 2009.

50 years is a long time. But they go by so quickly – or seem to have done so as you look back.

Regrets?
Satisfactions?
Successes?
Failures?

Gotta go and fry up some eggs.

Life goes on and there is a lot to do.

As the prayer says:

This is the day the Lord hath made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.