The Friday Evening of Life
By: Harry Hogg
Tags: Grandchildren, Nonfiction, Love, Relationships, Life

Image: Boulderpress.com

I had to smile when I learned from a friend that he believed me to be a peaceful, thoughtful man, and was surprised to hear I was taking part in a protest march at my age. You’re not even in your own country! Haven’t you been involved in enough shit for one lifetime?

So, I smiled, because yes, I’ve fought, screamed, and caused trouble all round the world. I’ve been hunted like an animal, and thrown into several different prisons with varying degrees of hostility. They didn’t throw me there because I was thoughtful, or peaceful, so in truth, my friend is right, I’m a broken man.

Growing old, I had lost the will to fight anymore. I was never fearless, nor could I manage to turn away from a fight. That, at least, stems from my childhood experiences. I never got used to taking a beating, but neither did I turn and run. In the end, the other kids followed me. Not because I was a bully, but because I wouldn’t let anyone bully them.

But I’ve long traveled away from youth.



Reflecting, I’m mad sometimes for all the chances I never took, the places not visited, the midnights that passed unnoticed. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take a chance again, or stay awake long enough to watch the woman I love fall asleep. I ran to be elusive. More often than not, I missed the things worth stopping for.

I wondered, oftentimes, knowing my lifestyle, if I would ever meet the turn of the century, let alone be around in 2020. Looking back, I wonder if what I wanted was ever attainable? Or that in reality it was never out there anyway.

I felt a new attention today, caught almost, as if the need to be off and running still hasn’t diminished. That getting up in the morning and joining a protest march in another country felt wholly worthwhile.



As I look out at the world today, everything going on that I don’t quite understand, I might be forgiven for thinking myself a pitiable soul. I’m not a very bright bean — I see this very well as more and more happens in the world, even among my friends.

I see this very well, now that I am too old to be a clever boy — but I’ve got something. And that something is an incomparable sense of what is important to me in the world. Equal opportunity for everyone. An end to racism. To cast a vote for a government the rest of the world can look to and respect for their moral leadership.

But on a personal level, I was always looking for something else, something I alone could control. It took a while, but I have come to learn that this thing is nothing more than the simplicity of kindness and honesty and family. We don’t all have to find strength in fighting through the wilderness of absurdity to arrive at a straightforward and undeniable fact in this world— that family is love.

Given a second chance, I did learn it in the end. I was raised by a family not always accepting, not always tolerant, but a family that was a fighting force for love. We were not tongueless, we inhabited each other’s lives in ways too difficult to explain. Family can sometimes seem like an ugly language. It can make us want to hide behind walls. But it is a language that, once learned, brings great insight into togetherness.

I am about to accept two newly born grandchildren into my life and into a conflicted divided society.

When I was born, I was not welcome. I was not the result of a love story. I was not intended for this world, and that fact has left me — in so many ways, mostly creative —with wanderlust in a mind as dark as a self-confinement cell.

I’ve made egregious mistakes in my life, lied, bullied, fought everything except to face the truth of my life, even with the help of people who truly cared and loved me. It didn’t matter what came, how, or where, I never wanted to be found.

These two grandchildren, and any that follow, will have the most wonderful lives ahead of them, not because of fortune or fate, but because they entered this world belonging.

With each, I will learn a new language; one that will build as these children grow, with building blocks, toy towns, Christmas signs and Santa Clauses, with sleds piled high, marvelous worlds, changing then, to the language of geographical maps and travel, new experiences, and when every language is taught, it will be time to learn the language they will teach.

If life were a week long, I sit here on a Friday evening, never having stayed home enough. The shutters are almost down. The road I have traversed has never been unlit, even on the outskirts, but full of noise and lights and people. There have been carnivals, merry-go-rounds, dippers that sometimes dipped deep — but rose high.

I cannot wait to be a grandparent. I have so much to say, to share, to close out a chapter with so much joy.

The last part is where I am at. It is simplistic enough.

It is family. It is everything.

So I wake up, and march with others feeling the same way I do. The world has to be better for everyone — your world and the world of my grandchildren.