A Penguin in the Orchard

This Day In History

It’s funny how, when I got beyond 35 or so, birthdays began to take on some significance. They’ll never hold the excitement they did when I was 7 or 8. But they do hold some quiet significance, some feeling of accomplishment that almost seems unearned. I’m vertical another day and have been for 365 since the last.

When you’re standing in the midst of one, birthdays are really just waypoints, good places along the road to sit and rest and evaluate the year traveled. And it’s clearly been an interesting one. Half of it was unemployed (or “self-employed,” as I liked to tell strangers). All of it brought good health for the family in my home - no emergency room visits, no extended hospital stays, no surgery. Well, there was my emergency room visit, but it turned out to be nothing.

I picked up a new/old family and have spent the better part of my 42nd year acquainting myself with the familiar - the gestures, the humor, the conversation, and the uniquely familial view of the world. Every few months since April, I’ve had a moment of astonishment at that story; that it really happened and that it’s all turned out so well. I’ve heard from them all in the past few days. We’re all a bit overwhelmed that the mystery of the other is finally solved. It’s the first birthday with that family since 1964, you see, but the road to discovery is already halfway built by the similarities we never knew we shared.

I lost family in my 42nd year, as well. One was a canine member, part of the family for 12 years. She died comfortably in our living room after a long and happy life. Truth is, I miss the way she smiled when we walked through the door.

And my grandpa. I think about him often. I got to hold his hand as he died, telling him he’d done his job well and that it was okay to go. I hope it made it easier for him. I know it did for me. I don’t hurt so much for his passing because I was there and it was time.

This year was also the first of Linux by immersion. It’s been my primary OS for years, but I’d always managed to keep a thin lifeline to the evil empire in the form of dual-boot systems. When pressed, I too often credited the necessity for Windows to my wife. It’s amazing what you can learn when you have to. Once the Gates-free zone was firmly established at my house, I wondered what had taken so long. It’s probably the same thing that’s kept me sucking down cigarettes for 28 years. Windows was just a bad habit. Foregoing the other seems like a good project for my 43rd year.

And, I returned to the most challenging, rewarding, frustrating, and meaningful career I’ve ever known. A typical day is filled with programming, wordsmithing, marketing, project management, engineering challenges, assembly work, and communicating with customers, vendors and contractors. That’s why I don’t do terribly well in big companies. I’m neither a tight specialist nor a broad generalist. I just function at my peak with a dozen balls in the air. There are 8 of us in the company. I go to work in the morning and come home at night believing that there aren’t another 8 people working together anywhere in the world who can do what we do with what we have. We just never take for granted that the fruits of our work carry truly cosmic implications.

I turned 42 today and started my 43rd year. For posterity, it’s been a good one.