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.

The search for the perfect cello goes on. Wood or carbon fiber? Have tickets to the Apocalyptica concert in Vienna this coming Monday, so I’ll finally hear the Luis & Clarke played by Perttu Kivilaakso, but only (greatly) amplified, and not solo, which makes it nearly impossible to judge its tonal qualities. The search goes on.

Insight comes to us at the oddest times.

Or maybe it’s not odd, maybe we are more receptive when our mind is blank, when we are showering, or driving, or someone is talking to us. Like this morning, on the freeway, with perfect clarity it occurred to me that I was so hungry because I had forgotten to eat breakfast.

If I could only forget to eat Gamma’s chocolate Easter bunnies, I’d be slim, as slim as… quick, who’s a slim male celebrity, all I can think of is Mr. Rogers.

Person one: And the secretary said her boss and the big boss were both freaking out and cranky.
Person two: Uh huh.

Person one: So I wasn’t the only one. Maybe there was something in the air making menopausal men crazy.
Person two: Uh huh. So anyway, what’s-her-face said to me…
Person one: Can you talk to her without thinking of her eyebrows? I mean, you and I, together we have average eyebrows, but because we have average eyebrows to begin with. She and her husband do too, though — I mean, she has that freaky cyborgian no-eyebrow look going, and man, his look like they just crawled onto his face at night to build coccoons. Or that they’ll start burning soon and God will talk out of them
Person two: I never notice people’s eyebrows.
Person one: And that other couple we met. I can’t remember her eyebrows, so I assume they were within a normal range. But her husband’s!
Person two: Bushy?
Person one: Like two squirrel tails. Like antennae. Like…
Person two: You sure talk a lot for it being not even six in the morning yet.
Person one: Don’t they see it? Why don’t guys my age trim their eyebrows? Seriously. Just a little clipping now and then. Nothing drastic.

Person two: [Sets teacup on table thoughtfully] You. Pluck. Your. Eyebrows?
Person one: Huh? Pluck? Me? No. No way. No, no.
Person two: Uh huh.
Person one: A little trim now and then…

I mean, the table I designed all those years ago by making a little one out of wood scraps and giving that to the carpenter is still working, we still eat breakfast on it every morning. And we still love each other most days. And you like that we have five different kinds of daffodils blooming in the flower bed in front of the house, and that makes me happy because I planted them last autumn in the hope that you would see them and smile this spring, and here you are, smiling. And the little one’s across the street in her pyjamas and house slippers, stealing dandelions from the neighbor for the tortoise, who’s out in the flowerbed. Jesus I hope she doesn’t get hit by a distracted commuter on her way back across the street. We could use a new welcome mat, all the nubbins are starting to break off. And the front steps, largely concrete with slate over them, are still settling and now there’s a half-inch gap between them and the house I’ll eventually have to figure out how to fill with something sometime. And the cars need to be washed, and my tank’s empty. But the weather is warm and the forsythia is blooming and the new flowerbed in back of the house is looking good. And Gamma made it back across the street and I got two braids into her hair without too much screaming.

You know what? Fuck the bright side. Why always look just on one side of things? Look on the bright side, the glass is half full. Look on the bright side, cats can’t talk — think what a pain in the ass that would be, cats bossing you around. Look on the bright side, pal, until it’s too late. Look on the bright side until, shit, zombies grabbing me! How’d those zombies get in the house? So I think it’s not a bad idea to look on the dark side now and then, in case of zombies.