Twenty Miles

He's getting old.

And looking back on all of it now -

Escaping from school to hide in the woods, hunting with his father, his parents' divorce, his uncle's suicide, his sister's death, the war, the alcohol, the drugs, the women, the woman, the girl, the boy, the countless weight loss pills, the endless diets, the gym, the feet that always hurt, the feeling of wishing he could do more never going away.

In the mirror now -

Hazel eyes and white hair he stopped dyeing two years ago when his daughter told him not to. Crocs in various shades lined up like soldiers by the bed. Summer, the grill smoking like a house on fire, sun beading his forehead with irritation.

His entire universe -

Picking up his son from the school bus stop, the boy with loose, electric limbs and the brightest eyes; dimples, and mussed hair, and all those questions questions questions. He is going to a magnificent man someday.
The girl he loved before he even knew he could love someone like this. His hidden treasure, his princess, his sunshine. The only one who has the power in her hands to break his heart into a million tiny pieces.
The woman with whom he's spent nearly thirty years of his life. The woman who can do anything and everything, and he wishes he knew how to tell her that, how to say thank you.

He's getting old.

People are dying (have died) and sometimes he thinks about when we was the captain of his high school football team, when he loved a girl who wasn't his, the girl who drowned when she was on her lover's boat. He thinks of all the people he used to know, all the people who used to know him. All the cigarettes that filled his body like water, everything he's done that he wishes he could take back.

Sometimes he wishes he could live alone in the woods. Live wild and solitary, growing tall as the trees, alone as his cabin. Where his body never aches, never weighs him down. Where he never argues with his wife, yells at his son, sees his daughter cry. He could stay there forever, he thinks.

But he can't, because he needs them. He needs them to make him laugh and smile and hold and love. He doesn't know it, but they need him, too.
His son needs him to show him how to be a man. His daughter needs him to make things better. His wife needs him to make things right. And someday, he will. He needs to, because it's the only way he'll feel like it all matters.

It matters.

He's getting old, like a car that's gone too many miles and is just running low on fuel. Running on empty. Another twenty miles more, he thinks to himself. More pit stops, more landmarks, more breakdowns. He smiles wryly to himself. It's not the destination, it's the journey.

Another twenty miles more.