Mending the Waters

Having recently been diagnosed with a rare and troubling medical condition—late-onset maturity—it has become unavoidable that I begin to take the world and its woes more seriously.

The coming election, the war, and the painful issues that are dividing our nation are no longer things that I can ignore by simply crawling under my desk, despite the fact that, in doing so, I found my guitar capo. (I had dropped it recently while playing a Neil Diamond song for the pleasure of colleagues passing in the hall, even though none of them stopped to listen. One of the sad ironies of middle age is that, after I finally learned how to play the hits of the ’60s, nobody wants me to.)

Don’t get me wrong. I am not one to shun controversy. I have always been a passionate observer of life, but mainly by peeking from behind the door of the janitor’s closet down the hall. Now that the world calls out to me—and a court order says I can’t peek out at people from the janitor’s closet anymore—it’s time for me to enter the fray.