Time Came Calling

I was sitting alone on my front porch this morning, engaged in the noble American tradition of doing absolutely nothing and calling it reflection. At my age, a man can sit motionless for twenty minutes and have folks wonder whether he is meditating, sleeping, or waiting for his warranty to expire.

I was contemplating matters of no importance whatsoever when I happened to glance across the street. There stood a young boy, perhaps eleven years old, looking directly at me.

He smiled gently, raised his right hand, and gave me a friendly wave. Being a reasonably civilized fellow, I waved back, though I confess I first looked behind me to see if he might be greeting someone more deserving of recognition.

Then I looked closer. The boy was me.

Not a boy who resembled me. Not a boy who shared a few unfortunate facial features with me. It was me exactly as I had been at eleven years old, standing there in plain sight as if time had misplaced one of its employees and sent him to the wrong address.

I was so startled that I nearly rose from my chair, which is no small feat. At my age, standing up requires the sort of planning and coordination usually associated with military invasions.

Before I could complete the maneuver, I glanced to my left and discovered another surprise. A man sat quietly in the rocker beside me.

He looked familiar, too. Naturally, it was me again.

This version appeared to be about eighty-five years old, which was particularly confusing because I am already old enough to be offended by mirrors. Yet there he sat, rocking peacefully, looking at me with the expression of a man who knew exactly how the story ended and was too polite to spoil it.

At this point, I began to suspect either a supernatural occurrence or defective coffee.

I turned toward the front window behind me and caught sight of my reflection. There sat another version of myself, perhaps thirty years old.

He looked strong, confident, and irritatingly optimistic. It was the sort of fellow who still believed hard work would be rewarded, politicians would occasionally tell the truth, and that a full night’s sleep could cure most of life’s troubles.

The sight of him annoyed me immediately.

Youth has always possessed an unfair advantage. A young man mistakes energy for wisdom and good knees for immortality.

It is only later that he discovers wisdom arrives precisely when his knees have filed for retirement. For a moment, the whole porch seemed to grow quiet.

Somewhere in the distance, or perhaps only in my head, I heard Willie Nelson singing My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys. That old 1979 tune drifted through my thoughts like smoke from a campfire long extinguished.

Naturally, my first conclusion was that I had died. A man who suddenly finds himself surrounded by three versions of himself has a right to consider such possibilities.

The boy across the street stared at the future with curiosity. The young man in the window stared at it with confidence. The older fellow beside me stared at it with acceptance.

Meanwhile, the current model sat in the middle, trying to remember where he’d left his cell phone that morning. It struck me that all of us had spent our lives chasing something just over the next hill.

The boy wanted to grow up, the young man wanted to conquer the world, and the older man wanted a little peace. And the one sitting on the porch wanted to find his reading glasses, which had probably been resting on top of his head the entire time.

Human beings are peculiar creatures. We spend our youth wishing away childhood, our middle years wishing we were younger, and our old age wondering why we were in such a hurry.

We run through life as though it were a race, only to discover at the finish line that nobody was keeping score. Then something unexpected happened. I began to cry.

Not dramatically. There was no thunder, no violin music, and no profound speech. The tears arrived uninvited, the way relatives do during the holidays.

I could not have explained their origin if my life had depended upon it.

Perhaps I was mourning all the years that had vanished so quietly, or perhaps I was grateful they had happened at all. I was remembering victories, mistakes, lost friends, old dogs, old dreams, and roads traveled so long ago that they now seemed like stories belonging to someone else, or maybe the heart occasionally knows things the mind is too stubborn to admit.

When I finally blinked, the boy was gone, the man in the rocker had vanished, and the reflection in the window belonged to the old fellow sitting on the porch once again. The world returned to normal, which is to say it returned to being confusing in the ordinary way.

I sat there a while longer and watched the afternoon drift by. Then I laughed at myself.

After all, if a man cannot survive a visit from three former versions of himself without breaking down in tears, he is probably not nearly as tough as he has advertised.

I’m listening to My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys right now, examining the lyrics to see if I’m missing something.