Floating Self

Photo by Daralee

This photo of Ben and I (that's me on the left) floated up over Facebook from long long ago, from our old friend Dee. We were juniors at the University of Redlands studying in Salzburg and my world was changing in more ways than I ever imagined. Not yet 21, I was able to drink beer for the first time, and not just any beer but the world's best, in a bier keller 200 hundred years old, with my last name on the wall in a poem that I couldn't understand. I met my lovely wife-to-be Phyllis. Had a best friend, Kelly Cole, who ordered his dad's records  everywhere we went so that Nat King Cole's work would always be in stock - and Kelly would be my first friend to die of AIDS just a few years later. Traveling through Europe, I began to notice the bigger picture outside my own small limited world. I tasted the adventure of travel, knew there was no going back to the way I was before . . . and now, through the wonder of the internet, as the old image of myself - in those glasses, with that hair (!) floats back to me, I see my younger self possibly looking into the future, and I say "Hey, buckle up. It'll be a bumpy thrill, but you're gonna love the ride, gonna love where we land." Ah yes ~ This life afloat ~