One day you’re a swimmer in high school; the next you’re graduating from college. What seems like a few years later you’re sixty-nine. A lot of life happened in between.

Today’s my birthday, the cusp between Aquarius and Capricorn. I doubt that has any meaning but I like to think about this idea of cuspness, between one sign and another, the best of two worlds, maybe the worst of both?

And indeed it is! The cusp of Aquarius and Capricorn is the Cusp of Mystery and Imagination, so says tarot.com.

Strengths:

Determined, creative, entertaining, idealistic, witty, empathetic

Weaknesses:

Detached, chaotic, selfish, aloof, critical, judgmental

I could write an entire narrative to support these characteristics. That’s what we do. We string together life’s happenings into a story that gives—we believe—substance and meaning to our lives. A reason why we’re here, doing what we do.

It’s just a story we tell ourselves.

But today is a different birthday. It’s not an especially important one. I don’t mind turning sixty-nine. I neither feel it (however it’s supposed to feel) nor regret the advance in age. That’s what happens, and who wants to be young today anyway. Not me. I fear for the world my young grandchildren will inherit.

Today’s birthday comes at the beginning of a new future, a future that didn’t exist in my life a year ago when my wife decided she no longer could be married. My birthday came only a few days before that declaration. I should have known it was inevitable, history repeating itself, but chose to see only what I wanted to see, which wasn’t the dissolution of our marriage. But it happened. Life happens, even when you don’t want it to.

Today’s birthday is in Boston. I moved here two weeks ago, a one-way ticket to a new life in a familiar city that I will create, not out of my past but with a new freedom to be, freedom to act. It’s an imperative.

I’m spending today’s birthday—which I share with MLK as a holiday—with my son Sam and his family. I know a special breakfast is in store, smoked salmon, rye toast, scrambled eggs, two little twin boys maybe singing happy birthday if grandpa is lucky.

What I want to guard against is routine, falling into a routine that’s safe and orderly and ever so respectable. That would be easy to do here in Boston, a safe and orderly and respectable city, or at least the city I know. Some will be enough.

Last night it snowed, soft thick snow that covered the ground by morning with about four inches of powder. It was the first snowfall of my first winter in the new life chapter. We shoveled the driveway parking area, piled a mountain of snow for sledding, at least enough for a few good rides the twins could enjoy. By afternoon most of the snow was gone, the temperature reaching 38, dipping to 18 again tonight. Winter in Boston.

Today on my birthday I’ll think about my friends in San Francisco, and the probability that I would have started the day with a birthday swim at the South End, a birthday swim, like others in years before, with my friend Josh. This time of year the water in the Bay is cold, in the low 50’s if not colder. I remember one birthday, two years ago, when Josh and I swam up to the Creakers and swimming back encountered a strong current coming straight out from the Cove, pushing us away from the opening. For about ten minutes we both thought we might not be able to muscle our way back in. The water was frigid; we were frigid. Of course we did make it, and the sauna that morning was especially welcoming.

I’ll think of birthdays in happier days spent at Deetjens in Big Sur and the Ahwahnee in Yosemite. I’ll think of my 60^th birthday, getting side by side massages in Palo Alto. I’ll think of my 50^th birthday in Briarcliff Manor, a dinner party of good friends from those days in my honor. The Westchester County friends are no more. Nor is 50.

Today’s birthday, here in Boston, will be auspicious, steeped in intent. It will be intentful, a marking, a passage to this new future.

It will be a happy day.

Farewell. But not forgotten.

No one wore a hoodie. No one wore jeans, or a T-shirt. No one had a ball cap on, backwards. I knew I was no longer in San Francisco.

It was Tuesday evening at the Liberty Hotel in Boston and it was a Bowdoin College career-networking event. I looked around and thought, these are my people. Many undergrads were there, the young men all in jackets, a few with ties. The young women wore dresses, even though it was twenty degrees outside. Alums from many years participated, including a classmate of mine I hadn’t seen in perhaps forty years. An ER physician from Marblehead—he was wearing the same clothes as the last time I saw him those many years ago: blue oxford shirt, navy blazer, khaki pants, and a red striped tie. Now however he sported a thick gray beard, a salty look on an old sailor.

I remember not too many years ago, I think 2010, when I was met by my friend Marcia H in front of the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Providence and asked whether I should wear a tie to my first meeting with the board of a failing start-up about to develop a new product line. I was there to convince them to continue investing in the venture. She said of course, Niland, East Coast Sensibilities.

My now former wife hated those sensibilities, and condemned all of Rhode Island, all New England, anything that could be labeled Back East. She never wanted to go there, not even to visit my sons. She never agreed to let me show her Bowdoin, much less travel to Maine, places she knew I loved.

Now I am back, back in Boston. It’s early winter, no snow on the ground but frigid cold this past week. I’m wearing a down parka, thick gloves, woolen scarf and cap, and I’ve still been cold outside. My Californian body needs more time to acclimate. But everything looks right. I love it. Standing on the edge of Boston Common, looking up the green at the State House, all seems right in the world, a comforting sight.

What lies ahead is a future I need to create. I can’t pull the past into it. I am about to rent a very small apartment, a true mouse house, on a brick cobbled street deep in Beacon Hill. I feel like I’ve stepped into a Henry James novel, maybe the poor relation hanging on the fringe of grander society. Still, it feels right, right where I need to be, now and always.

Perhaps the hoodies will have to go as I downsize my wardrobe to fit in the closet-less house. A lot will have to go. My former wife would take sardonic pleasure in seeing the de-acquisition. She always told me I had too much stuff, and of course she was right. I didn’t need to hear it from her.

I don’t need to hear anything from her.

Tomorrow Sam, the twins, and I are driving north to Portland: Maine—“the way life should be.”

I’m on the right coast.

When I was in college in Maine the pop-artist nun Sister Corita Kent was a big deal. Even today when you drive up Interstate 93 you can see her famous painted LNG storage tank Rainbow Swash, one of Boston’s most prominent landmarks. Created in 1971, it’s the largest copyrighted work of art in the world.

Today is in fact the first day of the rest of my life. Monday, January 6th, 2020: first full day in Boston, my new home.  Not that I have a home, yet. I’m staying with my son Sam and his wife Saga and twin boys Miki and Ethan. They have welcomed me for as long as I need to find a place of my own. I’m a lucky dad.

It’s cold outside–this being New England in the winter–and my Californian body was freezing. Down parka, wool sweater, socks, scarf, cap, gloves. Light as a feather flurries filled the sky for an hour or so. I’m delighted. It feels like where I’m from.

I realized today that it’s going to be okay. Yes, I miss my friends in San Francisco already.  Just knowing that I won’t be jumping in the Bay with Josh on Thursday morning makes me sad; that I’ll not be having dinner with Ray on Wednesday at Gamine, followed my my guys at Cow Hollow.

But it’s going to be okay.

The past eleven months have been transitionally difficult, emotionally difficult. To live under the yoke of unwanted divorce has been painful. To live in silence and distance from someone I loved has been painful. To see what that person has become has been sorrowful.

My son David called last night to say wish me well on this new life journey, and tell me, “No more girlfriends, Dad. No more marriages. They don’t work out well for you.” I guess they don’t if one looks only at the outcomes.

Would I ever trade never having known the mother of my sons for a better marriage? Never. Would I ever trade the experience of love at first sight for never having met EL at a dinner party in San Francisco? Never. Would I ever trade the little time of warmth and happiness of marrying BA for never answering her email on OKCupid? Never. Maybe hindsight memory distorts the reality of all the suffering I experienced when these three–the only three in my life–relationships ended.

It helps being on the other side of the country.

Today, here in Boston, is the first day of the rest of my life. Not outcomes projected, or even wished for–but David’s advice won’t be taken. I didn’t move to a monastery. Maybe no more marriages, but girlfriends? Sure, I’m open.

Putting the past in the past. Creating a future that didn’t exist before.

First day!