the wheel in the sky

we were driving back tonight from some friends' house and the journey song "the wheel in the sky" came on. there were some comments about how good a voice steve perry had/has and i wondered if randy jackson was fat when he was with journey (yes, i would ask something stupid like that). then asked dawn about the song, and she said it was about time just going on and things happening as time goes on.

it got me to thinking about stuff and life and age and such.

on thursday i will turn 37. no, no, hold back the applause. it's quite ok.

over thepast few years, when i sit back and think about how old i am or going to be, i draw a blank for a second. i have to go back and mentally plug in the current year with the year i was born and come up with the correct age. i never had that problem. i've found that as i move on, i just forget how old i am. perhaps because it really doesnt' matter. the point is is that i'm moving on i years, not stopping, unless i die. so regardless if i'm 37 or 50 or whatever, i'm still simply moving along and going with the flow, a small being in a universe that is expanding, making me even more minute with each microsecond. and yet, here i am, writing this, able to think it, peruse it, and write about it.

bullshit? probably. however, still, mindblowing.

anyway, back on track. time does keep going. to quote a alan jackson, "time marches on."

this will be my fourth birthday living in michigan. my eighth since i've known dawn (in one capacit or another), and the sixth birthday since we've been married. i'm three years from completing my fourth decade in this life. quite an achievement, since three decades ago, i couldn't fathom much else than being a kid living day by day in a ranch, coming from school, playing or pretending around the ranch. now, those days are long gone. a distant memory somewhere in the horizon.

this will be my first birthday without my dad. i will miss talking to him and his making a joke about my age. he'd reverse the numbers and we'd laugh if it made me longer. he'd have a good one over this year. i'd be 73 (older than he'd be if he were alive).

i was thinking about him today. dawn and i were sleeping out in the living room and i woke up and our neighbor across the street was working on his yard or something. he was whistling a tune, nothing recognizable. but his whistling reminded me of dad when he's work. he's be walking or doing something and whistling along. i don't particularly enjoy hearing whistling; it kind of drives me nuts when i hear people doing it. but i never did mind when dad whistled. it was calming. i had forgotten about that part of him until this afternoon. i do miss those notes.

"the wheel in the sky keeps on turning/ i don't know where i'll be tomorrow."