The Salad Days

When I was reading "Water for Elephants" I was struck by a beautiful passage. I came across it one night while reading in the bath, desperate to get a little solitude and quiet after dealing with a toddler's meltdowns, a princesses constant pleading for attention and piles of laundry. It made me smile. I felt my 80 year old self whispering to pay attention and I read it over and over again.

Those were the salad days, the halcyon years! The sleepless nights, the wailing babies; the days the interior of the house looked like it had been hit by a hurricane; the times I had five kids....and a wife in bed with fever. Even when the fourth glass of milk got spilled in a single night, or the shrill screeching threatened to split my skull, or when I was bailing out some son or other -- or, in one memorable instance, Bobo -- from a minor predicament at the police station, they were good years, grand years.

Here's to the exhausting best days of my life.