Days in a Life

Two major milestones have scooted up and placed themselves beneath my feet today, (and all before lunch, too!) They were like any other milestones really, looking like ordinary days until you take a step and realize that you are standing in birthday cake, if you're lucky. Of course, you know they are coming up, but all the other stones are so hypnotic that you can't imagine you will ever walk fast enough to earn a slice of the sweet sticky (hopefully confectionery) stuff suddenly staining your socks.

The first milestone (and I can't quite reason why it has earned the title "first," except to chalk it up to logistics) represents my eighteenth birthday. This occasion has thusfar proven less glamorous than it did from the Kodak viewpoint down the road at my seventeenth; I have already been informed by several hyper-politically-minded-but-surely-jesting-relatives that in no uncertain terms am I ever permitted to check a vote for a Republican. ("America the free," thought I.) Really, you wouldn't believe what a nice helping of family stew can do to the taste of birthday cake- I might as well have tossed droppings on the milestone.

The second stone, simultaneously more public and private than the first, is less of a stone, and more of a book, though to be fair it was a really bit of both and the lines often blur in cases like this where it's so close to each that you can't tell. This book isn't quite as thick as you had hoped so it's a bit of a wobbly stop and rather easy to stumble over if you aren't watching out for it. Fortunately (because I abhor stumbling on anything, much less the Path of Life) I am nearly always on the lookout for books in the road, even at night when it is harder to read. This particular book has been rather well publicized lately (I am certain you can surmise the title) and I had been watching for it for something of a long time. Today was the day that I finished this book, and I laid it back down among the cobbles where it turned back into a stone. I still have the book, but it is now no longer a milestone; only a book albeit a special one.

I suppose that's why I prefer paved roads to cobbles. The monotony draws some objection, but I bring my books wherever I go anyway.