Best Times

Recently I had the opportunity in various forums (including on WordPress) to choose the best decade and the best year of my life. I thought such questions would be easier to answer than queries about whether I favor tercets or quatrains when writing poetry. I was about to identify the 1960’s as my favorite, partly because I fell in love and married my wife in the last few years of that decade. But in 1962 my parents moved me across the country in the middle of high school and rheumatic fever left me bedridden that summer. I knocked my front teeth out, hit one family car with the other one, flunked Chemistry, was rejected by girls, cut by sports teams, and kicked out of the high school play. Each decade I considered was chock full of the good and the bad. The births of children were balanced by miscarriages and deaths. Job promotions and recreational triumphs were diluted by the health problems of family and friends. Weddings and grandchildren were offset by the sorrow of loved ones suffering through mental illness, addiction, and jail time. I tried to bend decades. What about 1968-1978? All the decades have been good to me but I envy anyone who has escaped one without a gut wrenching heartache. And I want to see how the 2020’s go before I make a final decision. A good year seems easier to find. Maybe 1980 or 2011. But the easiest timeframe to isolate is a day. I can rattle off good days like crazy. That day I was born in 1947 was the absolute best although I can barely remember it.