While in the middle of the most important thing I was doing with my life, I found him. Or he found me. Either way, all of a sudden the reality of being a parent—so unexpected, so unplanned-for, so serendipitous—became the thing. That was 13 years ago. And did it make all the difference? Of course it did. I had lived at least three lives up to that point, each of them rich with the vital things that make one human and alive.

Cut to the now, and I am faced with another inflection point. To bend this way, or that? Is the question. I look out and to the distance to find the hint of an answer. There is naught but the silence and shimmer of the ocean. So I step forward to the unknown anyhow, which is how I’d always done it, and which I know will sustain me until the end of my time on this plane of being, on this planet moving, along its hidden arc of space.