50 Years

What was I doing:

50 years ago: I am still in the future, but the events leading to my existence are coming together. My mother is fifteen years old and is having problems. Although bright and personable, she is battling her parents and teachers constantly, perhaps more than a 'normal' teenager, she confesses to me later, and her school days are quickly coming to an end. She will drop out of high school at 17 and begin traveling, sustaining herself by selling magazines and who knows how else. She will join the Women's Army Corp in time to get some direction in her life and will meet my father along the way.

40 years ago: I am probably still living with my parents and two-year-old sister in 1960s nuclear family bliss. Dad is an army medic and my mother is his second wife. He's already moved this family through four states in four years (Texas, Alaska, New Hampshire, Virginia). Vietnam is shifting into higher gear and my father will be leaving within the year to do a tour in Southeast Asia, leaving us to live in a Reno slum off Denslow Drive (he would eventually do three tours total there). The strain of the constant moving and separation, plus the ongoing fidelity issues between the two of them, would end their marriage four years later.

30 years ago: My mother, her third husband Richard, and I return to northern Nevada after a year in Henderson. If there is a tragic figure in this life of mine, it is him. He was medically and honorably discharged from the Army during Korea for reasons I never discovered, but he is a gentle soul. Because of his soft nature, he is completely whipped and browbeaten by my mother, and I have no respect for him and treat him horribly, one of the deepest regrets of my life. He plays the viola like an angel, but those angels cannot save him from his own inner demons. I come home one day to find he's swallowed a bunch of pills. He survives and my mom divorces him, then remarries him later. They divorce again not long afterwards and he fades from our lives. Richard dies in 1996 at the age of 64 in Santa Clara.

20 years ago: I have my own nuclear family and cannot believe it is possible to be so happy. My wife is pretty and sexy, and my daughter is the smartest child in existence. I have been in the Air Force a little over three years and am already a non-commissioned officer, a fast burner by any measurement. I will be a team chief of a million-dollar data processing facility in the near future, one of the youngest ever, and I'm thinking about going twenty years. But I am not satisfied with my career path. Soon I will pass a test to become an drug and alcohol abuse counselor and leave my family for San Antonio, Texas for schooling. It does not work out for many reasons and I return to Nebraska, the first of many career failures. There is a gigantic silver lining: Liz and I conceive our second incredible daughter shortly after my return.

10 years ago: I graduate with my third associate degree. I've been a civilian for four years and every penny is precious, especially with raising three dynamic and energetic daughters. All are much smarter and cuter than their father, who is silently amazed that his gene pool is even partially responsible for them. If I could, I would reach back and grab those days once again...but they are ten years ago....

5 years ago: I am working at the university where my grandfather dedicated so much of his life, but unlike him, I am not a good fit for this school. The long-established cliques take my hiring as an intrusion into their self-inflated status quo and despite my efforts, the waters are poisoned for good and I will be "invited" to find new employment elsewhere. I will bounce back from this failure, which I take far too personally, but it takes years to rebuild my confidence to the point where I will try new things.

1 year ago: I'm back to teaching college computer classes at the prison. It's actually only one class and although it started with more than 10 students, prison life and a lax drop policy has whittled my class down to three whole students. My grandmother, a longtime family fixture around the holidays, has moved to California and we cannot make the trip to see her. It will be her last Thanksgiving. Eldest daughter has given up on school and is beginning to make noises about the Navy; she will be gone to basic training within a few months. Though I do not know it at the time, 2004 is the last year I will have the complete set of relatives in my life, but that is the way things are. Life moves on...

There are significant events that don't make this chronology because of the timing, notably the abomination that is my mother's second husband. There is also high school, Ken, ROTC, being a Baha'i', and my first real girlfriend, but those are stories for another time.