Like other older adults with a parent who died young, I am aware that I am living years that my dad never had. Last week, on a day I spent all morning leisurely writing and all afternoon leisurely fishing, it occurred to me that not only have I outlived my dad by more than twenty years, but the best years of my life were the kinds of years he never had.

My favorite years were during the 1970s and early 80s. I was in my twenties and in my prime. In all that time, I never held the same job for more than two years. I never lived in the same city for more than three. When I tired of school, I got a job. When I tired of work, I went back to school. Except for a few years of marriage to my first wife, I was beholding to no one. The only real tragedy during those years was the death of my dad.

In contrast, my dad was twenty-one years old and recently out of the Army when I was born. My mom was eighteen. To put this in perspective, my mom and dad were younger parents when I graduated from college than I was when Clare was born. In my twenties, I was clumsily trying to figure out life. In their twenties, my parents were raising a family.

My second best block of time is now: life in retirement. My dad died of cancer at the age of fifty-one, so he worked right up until the day he went into the hospital. In total, he worked for thirty years, which is the same number of years that I worked after finishing my Ph.D. The difference is that, for my dad, thirty years was his entire adult life. For me, thirty years left lots of downtime before and after my primary work years. My dad never had any downtime.

I’d be sadder about all of this had it not been for something my dad told me not long before he died. The seriousness of our conversations during the three months he was sick exceeded any discussions we ever had when he was healthy. When he knew he was about to die, he told me that he had no regrets. He would have preferred to live long enough to meet his grandkids and make them something in his wood shop to remember him by, but otherwise he’d done pretty much everything that he wanted to.

Writing this particular blog has me wondering whether I’ve done everything that I want to do. My gut says that there something else out there, but I don’t know what it is. 

Two Sundays ago autumn let me know that it had arrived. I needed a fall jacket to sit outside for my morning writing. The squirrels in the yard all had bushy tails. It was only a few weeks earlier that I’d observed that their tails were unusually scraggly. If the fluffiness of squirrel tails varies with temperature, this is something I should have noticed a long time ago.

My habit is to write for two hours, then go for a bike ride. The day hadn’t warmed over those two hours, so I wore a windbreaker and gloves for the ride. I should have put on long pants, too. During the ride, two V’s of Canada geese passed directly overhead. It seemed early for goose migration, but they were flying high and heading south. I assume that they were not birds from our local flocks, but skeins from the north passing through.

While on the marsh trails, I noticed that a few of the sumac leaves had turned. Green in its various shades was still the predominate color, but the reds of the sumac and the yellows of the goldenrod were impossible to ignore. There is a goldenrod truism that says early frost comes six weeks after the goldenrod blooms. I remember seeing goldenrod in flower at the beginning of the month, so the first frost is only weeks away.

Goldenrod was one of the first native plants I ever learned to identify. As a kid, each year around Christmastime my dad and I would find an abandoned field and collect a grocery bag full of goldenrod galls. Galls are swellings on the stems of the plant, and inside the gall is a single larvae of the gall fly. These small white grubs make for good ice fishing bait, so we would carry the bag out on the ice when we fished and split open the galls with a jackknife whenever the fishing was slow.

One time my dad had a half dozen galls and his favorite jackknife sitting in his lap when the end of his pole twitched. He jumped up to attend to his line and dropped his jackknife down a fishing hole. It was one of those moments when a kid sees his dad goof up and thinks, “Wow, am I glad it wasn’t me who did that.”

After my bike ride, Manyu and I, along with our friends Shu and Stefan, went apple picking. Buying the biggest bag that the orchardist sells and then filling it with more apples than Manyu and I can possibly eat has become an autumn tradition for us. By mid-September, the Jonathans and Galas were mostly picked over, and we had to walk to the far end of the orchard to find the last of the Sweetangos. The Honeycrisp had not been ready for picking until that weekend, so they were plentiful.

I am old enough to remember when apples came in only three varieties: Macintosh, Delicious, and Golden Delicious. I tend to stick with the old ways on most things, but not so with apples. I may dress “vintage” for the orchard (i.e., 505 Levi’s and an old Carhartt jacket), but once I get there I go after the trendiest apples.This year I was introduced to Zestar. The teenage girl at the cash register said that Zestar apples have been part of her dad’s orchard for as long as she could remember, but they were new to me. At least I don’t remember ever seeing them in a grocery store.