We’re living a more authentic life, and that includes decorating our house more boldly. Right now, we want to repaint the upstairs office. It’s white and we’re painting it Polar White.

It was last painted before we moved in, more than 10 years ago. Although it’s a small room, it’s a big job because documents and things have been accumulating all that time. Every shelf, every drawer, every cupboard is jammed full of notebooks I started, then abandoned after three or four pages; of drawings by Beta and Gamma, of their letters to Santa; of manuscripts and records and garbage. And every page must be looked at before it is saved or thrown out.

It is a terrible job, but it’s coming at just the right time. I’m finding books and manuscripts I’ve been looking for, I’m crying over pictures of the kids and various crap they brought home from daycare.

I found a book my wife made for me before we were married, with pictures of us and various sayings written in the margins. It’s nice to look at, but when I look at old pictures of myself, besides noticing how much weight I’ve gained, I have to think: if I would have known then how I would turn out, I would probably have killed myself.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’m not giving my young self enough credit. Maybe I would have been able to see that, although this is not exactly the way I had hoped things would turn out, I would not trade it for what I had hoped for then, either.

If I had committed suicide at the age of, say, 24, which is roughly the age I was when I was depressed and unemployed, sleeping on a friend’s sofa in a cold, condemned house, I would have missed all these things. An old weekly planner has a list of stuff to bring to Alpha, pregnant with Gamma, in the hospital, a few weeks before another entry about a flight to Ireland to pick up Beta’s first harp. Drawing these treasure maps for kids’ birthday parties.

Day before yesterday, Saturday, I walked downstairs to hear Gamma and her friend playing UNO with each other, and talking trash like I don’t know what. “Green! Shit, I don’t have any green. Here, take this: DRAW FOUR!” “BAHAHAHAHA, take this, I have a draw four too! DRAW EIGHT! BWAHAHAHA.” And so on. Merciless. Seven-year-old girls’ capacity for evil is widely underestimated.

All the big and little things. Helping a couple girls with a flat change their tire in front of my house last night. Bringing a lost truck driver home from the gas station this morning to ask Alpha directions because I wasn’t sure and he was looking a little desperate, a nice old guy with a double load of rebar; and Alpha was just out of the shower, naked, and didn’t want to come downstairs, so it was pretty funny. The cat, loving our new chair, tossing and turning on it because it can’t decide on a position because they’re all so comfortable.

On one shelf, in a stack of papers, I found a letter I’d written to Beta when she was less than a month old, even though we didn’t know if she would ever be able to read, because she’d been born seriously premature and there was a chance of brain damage. I didn’t know anything when I wrote it. Will she live? Will she be healthy? Will she be happy? Those were my hopes back then. That she would turn out the way she has, that possibility was beyond my capacity to dream.

I would have to thank myself for not committing suicide. Maybe I sensed this after all, that even though I would disappoint, so far, all my hopes for myself and become a boring, stupid and sentimental old guy, none of that would matter; that there is so much more to this life and that I would grow and become able to see it sometimes. What a gift that is.