For Me

So this weekend at church, there was a new lady in the twenty-five- to thirty-five-age with short blonde hair; she had children, of course, and a husband, as women of that age tend to. Young couples like this drift through the Atlanta congregation frequently. I didn't really pay much attention except to think a bit about aging.

Later, someone came up to me and said that he thought he knew me from somewhere. I tried to explain how he might have seen me at church at some previous time, but he noted that he was new to the area, just moved here a month ago. And then I recognized him. He was someone in my sister's class from high school. The name didn't come to me immediately; I called him his father's name first. He had just moved to Rome, Georgia. He, too, had migrated South, finishing up his residency in North Carolina before taking up practice there in Rome. He was a doctor.

A doctor! Now that's a useful profession. I felt sort of lame and unaccomplished.

His wife, of course, was the blonde woman I'd seen earlier, the kids his--his wife was in my sister's class from high school also. I knew them both. They recognized me somehow, though they hadn't been able to place who I was; if it hadn't been for that, I wouldn't have even known, for I hadn't recognized them at all.

Later, I talked with his wife a bit. The age showed around her eyes, as tends to do, but she was still a striking woman, even after all these years. (She had been a brunette in high school.) And he was a striking man. With a family, in a family town. I live in a singles town, with single friends, simply an older version of my younger self, with seemingly nothing to show for all the years. This is what it is to run across the families of those around my age, this sense of failure, of inconsequentiality.

I spent that night in Atlanta at the home of a young couple and their new baby. They own the house. He is working toward a pilot's lesson and is building a computer from scratch (to go with the two he already has). They have satelite television and so much stuff that they can't fit it all in the attic. The living room is crammed with toys and boxes amid the furniture. In the room I was put up in, his office, I lay staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. I wasn't jealous of all they had. Their lives seemed incredibly complex, as full as the house in which they lived. Really, I don't desire so much stuff. I like the simple life I lead.

And yet, when I look at my life. It is simple, I think, not only by choice but necessity. What bothers me isn't all the consumer products I don't have--I don't really want them--but the fact that I don't think I even could have them. I don't see how I could afford to own so much, which in turn makes me wonder how I could ever afford a wife, a child, a family, even if such were bestowed on me. I'm no doctor or computer programmer. I work with words, with language, a tool at everyone's disposal. My skills are not rare. I get by just fine, with more than enough--for me. But that's what it comes down to. It's all for me. For me. And so often, though I'm not unhappy, it all seems so pointless.