Seasons of Life

Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes

Five hundred, twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
In five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life?

          ~ Jonathan Larson. Seasons of Love from "Rent." 1996.

January 23. My measured life is now 21,675 days. One day longer than my dad’s.

It was a frigid day in 1983 when he couldn’t find a way to a day past that number, when he could no longer tolerate the pain that brought on his decision to not see another day. He’s been gone now for 36 years. I remember clearly my 46^th birthday and the realization that I had lived without him longer than I had had him with me. But this is another day, a different year, a further milestone if you will, a day longer than he.

What will my life look like now that its days are longer than his? What should it look like? How does an adult man “be” in this season of his life?  Where do I turn to find the path for the days beyond this one? Where is my model of adultness tomorrow and the day after and next year?

Perhaps these are maudlin thoughts too selfish for the now, but then again maybe it’s okay sometimes to wander in the past to be able to wonder of tomorrow.

I’ve been told that when dad discovered himself in the depths of emotional depression in the late 1950s, one of the solutions was to let the joy of a new life uplift his. So, a decade after my siblings arrived on the scene, I came into the world and my dad was happy. And in many ways, it seems, it became my role to keep him happy. Does that sound silly? Or egotistical even? No one has that much control over another’s life. No one can be responsible for someone else’s happiness. Intellectually that resonates; emotionally I struggle.

For 23 years I kept my dad looking forward, looking toward the next day, the next year, the next season of life. For those years he lived successfully with the disordered stress of his post-trauma life. For those years I lived out my role of at least giving him a chance at happiness. For those years of infant tears and terrible twos, the pre-pubescent outbursts and adolescent angst, through the college dilemmas and adult decisions, dad’s happiness was on-track. Until it wasn’t.

The ugliness of depression and anxiety and uncertainty and the feelings of unworthiness and incompleteness resurfaced at the end of his fifth decade and this time it appeared with an insatiable vengeance. The deep morass which was sucking him downward grew stronger and more emboldened than even before and the hole into which he was sliding was closing in on him. Any happiness I could bring was not enough to overcome the season which he was facing so his life came abruptly to an end, and my life without him began just as abruptly.

At times I look at my 59-year-old hands and I see his. Not nearly as scarred or calloused as those of a man who worked so hard to feed his family and to keep himself alive, as determined as anyone I have ever known. But there they are, nonetheless, as old as the day he wrote his last words to us, older now than those same hands he used just a few months earlier when he wrote about his own dad, my grandfather Earl who I knew only for the first few years of my life:

Now to me, Dad was something different. He was Earl McIntire and that name meant something in town and don’t forget it! I realized later that he put his pants on the same as me one leg at a time. But he was still Earl McIntire.

…

How do you suppose I know what sassafras looks like and smells like? Why do I still whistle at Red Birds?  Who had a miniature golf course in their back yard?  Who else had Lady Slippers, Blue Bells and 7 ft. ferns?  How many people know about Blacksnakes, and that Copperheads smell like cucumbers?  When was the last time you tried to eat a green Persimmon?

Indeed, Earl’s youngest son showed me many, many things. How to bring a doodle bug to the surface in a cup of sand. How to make Soupy Potatoes when mom is away. How to cheat at dominoes by blaming your poor eyesight mistaking a 4 for a 6—though grandmom taught him that one! How to live a life of integrity in a world which sometimes cheats at the game. How to kid without demeaning; how to laugh at the seemingly unlaughable; how to know when to laugh and when to cry. How to hold up your Boy Scout knee socks with thumbtacks—you see, my dad put his pants on one leg at a time too, but he had only one to put through.

And, yes, dad passed along what eating a green persimmon is all about. Has anyone shared that experience with you? No? Maybe you should try.   

We learn from those we love, from those we admire, from those we respect. From them we learn how to love and admire and respect and perhaps if we’re paying attention we learn who to love and admire and respect. I count myself among those who were able to have experienced those qualities in their dad and my hope is that I have faithfully lived these moments of my life to this day and will continue to more than one more day than my dad.     

Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred
Five hundred, twenty-five thousand journeys to plan.

Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes
How can you measure

the life of a woman or man?

So measure my life as a man by the measure of his life. And for these extra days that follow allow me to live out that tired cliché of one-day-at-a-time because quite truthfully that’s what life is, one day following another and another, a season of whatever is next.

Yes, a year is five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes and we measure our lives by those minutes and years and seasons, but also we need remember that every day is key to the next. It’s all borrowed time anyway, time measured in love that no one can ever own. And sometimes like my dad’s days beyond his 12,674, life is rent from you like a tear in your universe reminding us that life itself is but rented time for a season. ‘Cause everything is rent … 

We're not gonna pay

We're not gonna pay

We're not gonna pay

Last year's rent

This year's rent

Next year's rent

Rent rent rent rent rent

We're not gonna pay rent

'Cause everything is rent

              ~ Jonathan Larson. Rent from "Rent." 1996.

© 2019. James F. McIntire. All rights reserved. 

© 1996. Jonathan Larson. Lyrics from the musical “Rent.”