My twenty-year-old self would have never imagined this. He was busy
doing the Super Bowl Shuffle and watching MTV.
1986 John Shepley would have never believed that becoming a father
mattered more than becoming successful. He would have never realized that
losing love was a bigger lesson in life than finding it.
Twenty-year-old me would have never comprehended how a ballgame on the
radio or a sunrise over the lake would someday mean more than a kegger with a
bunch of horny Catholic girls. The extraordinary has a funny way of giving way
to the ordinary, and somewhere along the line I learned that the ordinary was
what mattered the most.
I think that is why Robert Frost's words hit home today, "The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected."
When we were
young, we thought we were writing the story. As we got older, we realize life
has been writing us all along. Every joy, every mistake, every heartbreak,
every sunrise, every goodbye, every child, every friend, every loss has quietly
introduced us to the person we were becoming.
I put the number of days in the Grabber section because that is how many
days it has been since I met my parents up in Edgewater on the north side of
Chicago.
All I know is this…
… life keeps revealing who we are
with every passing day.
Gusto and astonishment, you gorgeous Chalkheads.
Gusto and
astonishment.
