Thirty years ago, I commuted between the Valley and Washington DC, where I had just begun graduate studies. I was 23 years old in February of 1986, and yet much was the same as it is now. I saw this same sky on a winter's afternoon. I breathed this same air and felt the same fading warmth of the waning sun.
And yet, the people whom I care most about in the world, the people with whom I now share every day, were unknown to me.
Thirty years ago, I had not yet met Eileen. I could not even imagine her or the life we would share together. So much that makes up who I am simply did not exist. The children did not exist.
The sky looked just as it does now, but I was alone.
And in another generation, the sky will again glow as it does now. What kind of turmoil will the world have endured between now and then? Where will we all be?
I will have continued, and perhaps completed, my part in this story. There is nothing vivid about the future, except what I have learned up to this moment, which convinces me that everything is already present in hope. I know that there is a story, and that I am not meant to be alone.