The Interim Years

What have we been doing all this time? Or better, what should we have done? Instead of moving swiftly from courtship to nuptials to baby time, many of us spend the ten years after college working, drinking, traveling, developing interests, cultivating hobbies, sometimes turning into douches, sometimes not, and pursuing other, assorted distractions. Almost immediately, I went to New York. When all seemed truly bleak in Brooklyn, I took the train back to New Haven. But M wasn't happy there, and neither was I; we weren't fulfilled. The idea for a move to Mexico was born out of boredom and family foresight. M needed a place to caretake his ailing father. I longed to escape my fate, and despite having read Oedipus, I thought I could. Now that we're back, I feel the years we lost most acutely. Nothing was saved, only rearranged, as a surly science teacher used to deride the changing of the clocks. And certainly no one has changed, least of all me. All my fears are still here. But so are my friends also. Finally, a new phase is upon my generation. I don't want to mourn time. We spent the interim years the best way we knew how. I wonder what will happen next, and when.