I want to do what he/she does

I want to do what he does. Or she does. We start that from an early age. Firefighter. Baseball player. Skateboarder. Sometimes those models stick with us and we stay after them. Sometimes they change. Sometimes the reality sets in: I just don't have the sideburns or hair to be Eddie Murray.

As I got older, who those folks were shifted a bit. I remember reading Carl Sandburg when I was 15 and thinking, I want to be able to make someone feel/think like he just made me feel. That would be cool. In my 20s and beyond, that became Rilke, Tom Robbins, Gary Snyder. Jim Harrison.

The stillness of this earth
which we pass through
with the precise speed of our own dreams.

Harrison died this past week. He was 78. He died at his desk, writing. From the way he lived his life, it sounds like a blessing that it wasn't drawn out, to quote those who knew him, "he wasn't cut out for assisted living."

Strictly speaking, the writer's life is not for me. I have no interest spending my days behind a keyboard, indoors, deep in abstract thought or trying to inhabit the minds of characters that live in my head. No thank you. I would rather be outside, living life, and trying to communicate that in some way. And that is part of what Jim Harrison represents for me: living an interesting life.

He spent his life doing things he loved, outside. He did things that you read out, dream about, in some cases forget about. He lived a rich life. With his dogs:

Barring love I'll take my life in large doses alone--rivers, forests, fish, grouse, mountains. Dogs.

Harrison, Gary Snyder, Peter Matthiessen, Edward Abbey. Those guys are the last men standing when I look for my tribe of guys who did, or are doing, what I want to do.

Life and language. I can't get enough of either, though there are plenty of times when language fails, or I don't want it. Harrison got that too:

My heart must be open to the cosmos with no language unless we invent it moment by moment in order to breathe.

Being open to the Universe as a source for language. And as a guide for life. I have been digging the remembrances of Harrison the man, and Harrison the writer. Obviously those two aspects are one and the same. He was a part of his Michigan landscape, the region. He knew it, lived it, and could write about it like no one else. I have the Eastern Shore in my bones that way, I sometimes feel.

I like when you can use the term "rugged individualism," and not have it be hyperbole or false praise. Harrison is the poster child. And that's part of how he inspires me. He doesn't make me want to go to Michigan and do what he did. He makes me want to get out and find, strike up, live my own life. To get outside. To chase dreams.

My advice is, do not try to inhabit another's soul. You have your own.

Fireside, Cave Paintings and Dreams

My mind is dancing, fickle like fire. It won't stand still--it jumps, flicks tongues, wall rides, scattering darkness, but dives back down before illuminating. Can't see what's there.

I'm sitting in a cave. It's me, the fire, someone across the fire from me that I can't make out, just an outline. Not a stranger, just can't see across the fire.

Can't make out the cave walls. There are shadows. I need to stoke the fire. With what? Drugs bring smoke but no additional light. They are not the stoke.

tucked up in clefts in the cliffs
growing strict fields of corn and beans
sinking deeper and deeper in the earth
up to your hips in Gods
                 your head all turned to eagle-down
                 & lightning for knees and elbows
your eyes full of pollen

                the smell of bats
                the flavor of sandstone
                grit on the tongue.

                women
                birthing
at the food of ladders in the dark.

Gary Snyder chants. The flames dance higher. Figures on the wall...

Art. Poetry. Drawings. The child, surrounded by nature, is the one connected to the Universe. I know these drawings. I've seen them. I've written about them, read about them.

Caves. Fire. Shelter. Food. Primal elements. Fire meant food, community. It still does. Fire pulls the tribe together. It is conversation, happy hour, camping, return from a trail run to crack a beer, sip soup and share stories. Fire lets us see in the dark.

The cave has more. Skateboarding. Future Primitive. A love that began at 13 and has continued through today at 42 and tomorrow at whatever age. The figures on the wall look like this...

Lance Mountain. The figures are also running. Tribal. More of the cave, the walls are showing now. Scenes, images, symbols from my life. The girls. Passions. Shared experiences. Spelled out on the walls of the cave. Plato would be pleased.

I get up and walk to further parts of the cave. The walls are bare. They are uncovered. Unwritten. Still to be written. The writing is from life. From love. From experience. What is the rest of the story? What symbols? What art?

What becomes paintings on the cave walls begins as dreams. Neil Gaiman knows dreams. He has written Dream's story in epic and graphic fashion. He begins "The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections" with an artist, a playwright and director who is afraid of heights. In his dreams, he fears falling. He believes there are two possible outcomes to falling in a dream: either you wake up, or you die. No good outcome.

And the artist, the dreamer, finds himself in a dream, climbing. At the top of the mountain, he meets Dream. Dream points out that there is a third alternative. "Sometimes when you fall, you fly."

The most unlikely scenario. It flies in the face of common sense. But we aren't talking sense. We are talking dreams. Why would anything sensical wind up as a cave painting?

Dream for a time in the wilderness

In sandlot football (we actually played on a church lot; it had grass), you diagrammed your play on the palm of your hand. Or maybe you used a stick, drawing it up on the ground. You run a post pattern, you run a go route, you go across the middle and get open. When the plan worked, it was money.

Maybe it's the same thing in life. Rough sketch it in a notebook, follow the scheme, touchdown. Start with dreams for the line of scrimmage. That's where you start. Send vision, passion, sweat and fun long and have them catch the ball in reality.

The trick, there are actually many, is that dreams and vision in particular are not ready made. They are some assembly required and don't come with batteries included. Shit, now I've mixed metaphors; bear with me.

Recognizing our dreams. Jim Carrey gets it. Watching him draw up his life's play at a commencement speech might be the best investment of a couple minutes of your day you can make. I empathize with his story about his dad (except I am the dad), choosing the safe job instead of trying to make it doing what he loved, then getting laid off anyway. And I wrote Carrey's take away message in my notebook. I might post it on the refrigerator: "You can fail at what you DON'T want, so you might as well take the chance on doing what you love."

My time over the last couple weeks has been about being in touch with dreams. It's been applying for jobs, some I want, many I don't. It's been running, doing yoga, strength training, meditating. Hanging with the girls. Walking the wilderness of my mind.

It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and love for a time in the wilderness. - Loren Eiseley

Go apart and love for a time in the wilderness. Literally and figuratively. The Beastie Boys said "a castle in Brooklyn is where I dwell." I've gone quite the other route. I downsized. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, living room, kitchen, dining area, deck. Next to the woods and a huge field that can only be filled by the girls' imagination. Kickball, bocce, field hockey, soccer, fort building in the woods.

I choose not to be a slave to a house that is bigger than I need, that is more work, that keeps me, and/or the girls from truly carpe'ing the diem. I would rather dream and try to make that dream a reality than spend my time, my life, on upkeep and keeping up. Fu** the Jones's (no offense, Jones's).

I am not to the point of living in or building a tiny house, but man do I get it. If you are a Netflix fan, I recommend checking out the documentary, "Tiny: A Story About Living Small." Honestly, I think I was more inspired by the architecture and the folks they interviewed, particularly Jay Schafer, founder of Tumbleweed Tiny House Co., than by the couple who builds their crib, but there is a lot there to take in on many fronts.

What does it mean to try to realize your dreams? What does it mean to go after them? To cast off what society wants you to do, to be, and try to become what you want to be? How about I leave you with thoughts from three folks you might have heard of, rapping on dreams:

People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes. - Neil Gaiman

Those who dream by day are cognizant of a great many things which escape those who dream only by night. - Edgar Allan Poe

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country. - Anais Nin

Alright, everyone to the line of scrimmage. We're going to audible.

REA-DY. CARREY. CARREY. GAIMAN. POE. NIN. HIKE!

Reminiscing with Sid

I reminisce for a spell, or shall I say think back... - Pete Rock and C. L. Smooth

I think Sid Vicious was right. Not about much, but maybe about stepping stones. I'm not sure stepping stones exist. If they do, you can't see them. Not until you get to the end and turn around. Stepping stones exist only in hindsight. Only as a reminiscence. You couldn't have known it at the time.

Calling something--a period of time, a job, a person, a relationship--a stepping stone purely negates it. Being a line cook in restaurants wasn't where I ultimately wanted to end up, but it is something that is as much a part of me now as any other job. It is a period of time full of great people, and memories, and late nights, and laughs, and people who are still close friends. It wasn't a stepping stone, it was then.

He lets this brilliant shape move through time like a needle stitching together the two moments that compose nostalgia. Then and now. - Anne Carson, "Plainwater"

Thank you, Anne. That's what I meant. Stitching together THEN and NOW. That's the only way something can look like a stepping stone. But remember what Jurassic Park has taught us, objects in mirror (past) are closer than they appear.

Maybe reminiscing is time travel and nostalgia is that sense of floating through time and space, of actually feeling those two moments being stitched together, and we wear those stitched threads like an old sweater that we can't let go of no matter how many holes it has. We can't let go of the past, we can't forget, we want it to help make sense of the now, the future.

Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. - Robert Hass, "Meditation at Lagunitas."

Shit, Bob, don't bring that up now. Why do we have to bring longing and desire into this? I was just trying to cut out into Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth and let the sound wash over. You can reminisce without longing, right? When we look back to a simpler time, prior to bills, prior to taxes, prior to heartbreak and death, when we look back to innocence, we don't have to flip the bird at experience, right?

Maybe we do want that simpler time. Before desire created distances we aren't sure we can traverse. Before hurt pulled us into ourselves. When it was harder to tell the difference between dreams and the every day, because we could see our dreams more clearly, every day.

Maybe it is Dream, our dreams, that float above us and stitch together then and now. To remind us. To show us, it wasn't a stepping stone, maybe you stepped off the path, maybe you are on the wrong river bank, maybe you need to look back, re-route, face forward, open eyes, open heart, sun rising on new days, new feelings, new.

But first, reminisce for a spell...

Hubris, Geography, Dreams

I learned the word hubris in third grade. It has stuck with me since. I remembered it as meaning "excessive pride." It's been the downfall of mythological, historic, and fictional characters for as long as stories have been told. Hubris and karma are not the same thing. I'm not sure they're even kissing cousins.

Hubris rears its head in my life plenty. Whenever I'm outgrowing my britches, feeling larger than life. It's like an existential gut check, reminding me that I'm not all that. A little humble pie goes well with morning coffee. Maybe hubris is like a tea kettle with the water at a rolling boil; it's got no choice but to whistle to let it out.

And the hubris whistle says, "Stay humble, my friends."

Some of my reading has brought hubris back into focus. Characters in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman," who want to capture Death, to live forever, and end up summoning Dream and keeping him locked up for 75 years. And when he gets free, he goes about setting things right. There are all kinds of similar story lines. It's the Faust story retold, where someone wants more power, more knowledge, doesn't want to abide by the balance that life seems to move towards. They want to be outside the rules. In life and literature, it rarely ends up well.

Geography has been on my mind of late. The mountains, the beach, cabins, beach houses, New England, the South, the Eastern Shore. Maybe it's a restless leg syndrome of the soul. Wanderlust. Maybe it's being in the same place for too long. Maybe it's feeling like I have burned a path from Easton to DC that my car or truck would drive on their own, without me touching the steering wheel. You've seen what taking the same path too many times does to grass. It's not there to tell you about it.

The last several months of my life has been about change. A life revolution. Except that it hasn't. There is a stasis. Mentally things are different, except they aren't. But I'm also wary of hubris. Don't get too full of myself. Don't overreach. There is something to be said for familiarity. I've seen it when running the same route, of how much can be different, with the right eyes.

Ultimately, at the moment, hubris and geography and dreams combine to want something simple. Maybe a wee bit of solitude at a surf shelter like this one. Read, write, split firewood, try not to break my ribs surfing, cook simply, eat simply, walk and run through the woods. Recharge. And hey, there's a sauna. Sabbatical. Sanctuary.

Long live Cabin Porn for helping dreamers keep it simple, and be humbled by humanity's lowly role in nature's magnificence.

Dreams and Understanding

Park ranger is the first job I ever wanted. Really wanted. Daydreamed about. I pictured driving a truck around a national park, clearing trees and trails, helping out visitors, hiking trails, observing wildlife. Then coming home to a log cabin, either solo or with a wife and kids I hadn't pictured yet, hanging out, catching up, writing and reading. My writing and reading would be for me. John Muir, Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder style. That was the dream, life outside and in the world. And now I drive four-plus hours to and from work and sit in a cubicle for most of the day.

Hhmmm.

Understanding. Both yourself and someone else. I don't think I really got that until this last month. That's something I have stared down in the mirror and where I've made my biggest change, I think. Really understanding someone else. Getting out of my own way, my own selfishness, my own head. Maybe it's like empathy, but deeper. Much deeper. It's both easy and hard; hard as shit, maybe impossible until it's there and then, when it is, you wonder how it could not have been there.

I understand. That maybe wasn't true until this last month. It took some rough, heavy life to find it. I get you. I hear you now, when I didn't before, and now I don't know how I didn't. And I'm sorry.

And life feels different.

Dreams and understanding. I've found one. Maybe there's still time for the other.

"The world runs through us"

I could start with dreams, since I rarely have them. I hadn't dreamed on consecutive nights in more than a decade. "Sleeps in Fits" could be my Indian name. But there I was dreaming--super powers one night, confused in a distorted neighborhood the next. Deep sleep, Freud be damned.

I could start with inspiration, reading Jack Kerouac's poems, or Junot Diaz, Carl Sandburg or Matthew Dickman. Writers who read the world and themselves and swirl the two together on the page. Writers who look beyond language to what the words point at.

I could start with reading Ada Limon's "Shark in the Rivers," sitting along the Anacostia River while a Coast Guard Dolphin helicopter circle-hovers the river, three, four times; the river a debris-littered still in the days after Hurricane Sandy.

The pilot and I look at the river, neither of us wants to jump in.

The helicopter's WHUP is louder than the river, but not as loud as Sandy.

Ada Limon says, "This is the way / the world runs through us..."

and I wonder if she means with dreams, inspiration, words, poetry, helicopters and hurricanes.

Cast off the sea monkeys

It may that pool and ocean water have leaked into my brain. That combination of salt and chlorine, which, when you add Corona and multiply by no set schedule after driving 14 hours, sets your mind on simmer. Also known as vacation mode.

It may be that my brain is just slightly overfilled with thoughts. Like the legs of a girl maybe equal parts surfer and redneck, which were a little too long for her frame but all the more striking for their gangliness.

Leaked water, overfull thoughts, legs too long, whatever, it adds up to unsettled mind. It won't quite relax with the body. It has a different agenda, without the means or cooperation to get there.

Still our lives resemble dreams... realms of fantastic desire and possibility, like the kingdom of sea monkeys promised in the back pages of comic books of my childhood. -Campbell McGrath

Maybe Campbell McGrath is right and our dreams are sea monkeys, never as cool or promising or fully realized as we want them to be, believed them to be when we saw them advertised in the back of comic books.

Forty years is beyond the midpoint for dreams. There is still time to realize them, but elapsed time, energy and youth are all factors.

Our trip south is a beginning to summer. It is about family. It's about taking our girls to Disney World. Disney electrifies dreams; it blasts them from a star-loaded bazooka. It takes life's inconveniences, like waiting in line, and puts a princess or a pot of gold or wild ride at the end. We would do well to keep Disney in our minds, to hold on to and reach for our dreams.

At home I'm tired. I haven't been working out since my back spasm-induced ambulance ride. The routine isn't right. It's not fully me. The heart and soul is missing from the motions.

Your mojo can turn up in strange places. Mine gets cranking watching Washington Nationals games. Swimming with the girls or riding through the Haunted Mansion with Anna. Watching Ava rally through the Disney World heat or running a couple miles, doing push-ups and talking about life with Robin. Reading McGrath, Roger Angell, Tracy Smith and John Brandon.

Being on Florida vacation time. Looking to breath deep and fill my lungs for a return. A return to self. A return to place. A return on investment.

To go elbow or shoulder deep into and after dreams. To cast off the sea monkeys.

Geography and dreams

I didn't even take geography in high school. And still it has been a guiding force in my life. Not just any geography, mind you. More like a place.

I had a choice out of college. Two job offers: public relations (PR) at an art museum or reporter at the local paper. My cousin had gone the reporter route. It took him from Easton to Salisbury, to Wilmington, DE, to Chestertown, to Washington, DC, to Miami, where he's been for several years now. That's the newspaper route--you follow the trail to bigger papers and go where the offer is.

Geography is irrelevant.

Robin and I talked about it. It would be a life of moving. No deep roots.

PR offered up more possibilities where we were (and still are). It gave us a chance in one place. Where we met. Where I'm from. And where we love.

It might give us a geography of our choosing.

We chose geography. But it wasn't that easy. I think I've had the idea that I wanted to be a writer for some time. When I started the art museum job, telling people I did public relations left a foul taste in my mouth. I felt like I sold out before I ever bought in. No one dreams of a career in PR, not when they're little and dreams are still pliable.

My grandfather thought I'd be a sports writer for The Baltimore Sun. With my writing interest and love of sports and Baltimore (he and I always talked Orioles and Colts, then Ravens, and Baltimore sports icons, and he would always give me The Sun sports page when we stayed with my grandparents in Towson), it just made sense. Sitting around the campfire this past weekend, talking dream jobs, I said I want Mitch Albom's job, but based out of Baltimore and not Detroit. To write about the teams and sports I dig, but also use it as a launching pad for non-sports writing. You've heard of Tuesdays with Morrie, right? Oprah has. I don't think that's what I'd write, but you get the idea.

Around the same campfire, I explained the geography choice; how it's not an either/or vs. the dream, it's actually part of the dream.

If you've grown up on the Eastern Shore and been whirled into the Tred Avon River by the Oxford Ferry's wake; if you've beached your Whaler or skiff at night for a bonfire under the stars or camping on Chloras Point; if you've put down a few beers at sunset on a creek standing with friends on a newly constructed wooden bridge; if you've walked around a colonial town and been inside the houses where your father and grandfather were born and raised; if you've skateboarded and run on these same streets, giving them your own take; you're on your way to understanding this kind of geography.

But not yet.

When you walk along unsteady brick sidewalks, unsteady for the tree roots growing up underneath them, and you've got one daughter riding on your shoulders and the other holding your hand, walking next to your wife who you met here, laughing remembering these same roots under your childhood Keds shoes; and you're walking to the water to see the fireworks at the same place you watched them and learned to sail, at a place your great uncle helped put on the map...

you're getting closer. But it's not just having a history with a place. It's a connection. It's feeling the rivers and roads and marshes and woods--I could swear my blood kisses with the Bay's brackish water, separated only by skin when I jump or wade in.

I've known I've wanted to raise kids here since I was a carefree kid here, I think.

I'm not sacrificing a dream for a place. The place is contained in the dream and the dream is contained in the place.

Since picking PR over journalism, I've still been able to forge a writing niche. I've written about artists and art who/that inspire me. I've ferreted out, transcribed, edited and helped publish parts of James Michener's diary he kept while writing Chesapeake. I've learned and written about the Bay for various jobs.

In the latest chapter of my writing life I've been learning and writing about the Coast Guard--a service my grandfather and great uncle both served in during World War II. I'm occasionally writing about a new cutter named after a former Coast Guard Commandant who put my grandparents up in his house when they didn't have a place to stay. It has opened my eyes and connected me to a part of my family history that is now also a part of my family's present.

Writing is a part of my daily life, at work and in the mornings, on my own time.

Geography and dreams. For some people, it's a choice between them. Or maybe one is irrelevant. For me, I'm not sure where one ends and the other begins. Maybe they are the same.

A letter to Mike Tomlin

Dear Coach Tomlin,

Up yours. Let me explain. I say this not as a Ravens fan (though I do bleed purple), but as a 38 year old. The same age as you.

At 38 most of us are still paying our dues. Maybe we are on the path to our dream job, maybe not yet, but career nirvana is supposed to be attained at 50, or late 40s at best. We're still under the thumb in our 30s.

Perhaps you didn't get this memo? At 38 you've become a dominant, iconic head coach of one of America's most storied and celebrated football teams. You've won a Superbowl and come a last-minute touchdown from a second.

And your success has come from your mind, determination, leadership. It's easy for us (me) to dismiss the athletic success of younger men or women as unattainable. At 5'10" 175ish pounds, I'm not playing linebacker in the NFL or power forward in the NBA. I'm okay with that.

But you've risen to the top of an older man's profession. We're supposed to be looking for incremental progress. Setting our sights on the mountaintop and then settling into the long marathon pace it takes to get there. You've Michael Johnson'ed the career track in 200 meters. You've fu%^ed all this up.

Now I can't say, well I'm 38, I'm about where I'm supposed to be. Now I've gotta think, yeah, but what about Mike Tomlin??

You've set the bar so high that we all may just wind up at the bar.

So way to go, Coach Tomlin. Congratulations on your success. Now I've gotta get the drawing board back out and try to game plan for reaching my dreams... a lot faster.

Thanks, Coach Tomlin. Thanks a lot.

On Dreams, Waking

For the most part, I no longer dream when I sleep. Gone are the nocturnal adventures of flying Superman-like around familiar places or walking down the middle school hall in tighty-whiteys. Gone is the house I grew up in transported to another time and place and being laid out differently. Gone is the running from or battling gangs or monsters. Gone are the falling dreams and gone are the subconscious hook-up sessions that leave you confused upon waking.

Sometimes I miss dreaming. But it cruised out of town in a land speeder with sound sleep, which is another thing missing at night.

Usually though, I don't miss dreaming at night because I have always more than made up for it with dreams during the day. My mind has been known to wander locally, continentally, internationally, globally, celestially, with little or no cue.

Geographically my mind is often led to places like England's Lake District or anywhere around New Zealand. The Hawaii of Merwin and Jack Johnson and the H.U.R.T. trail races. Mountain monasteries in France and half-conjured ponderings of Inca civilization in South America.

Sometimes my mind is immersed thru-hiking sections of the Appalachian Trail or drools at the Trans-Rockies or Trans-Alpine Runs and others it hangs with a pint at the Eagle and Child Pub where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams gabbed together.

The obvious cues to kick-start these mental travels are books, magazines and movies--pilgrimage porn that cannonballs the mind to their documented destination.

Museums have been known to hotwire a journey as has music. In Chicago, within a few blocks you can meander through the Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium, and Art Institute, which give you any number of vehicles to transcend time and space (no flux capacitor required).

But I find that I don't need much in the way of external prompts. It might be taking a different route to get to a familiar destination. Or going for a long run.

When solo runs peek over 20 miles they can turn into sufferfests for me. I've discussed the reasons I run here before, but certainly the mind-freeing/sweat lodge style transcendence sometimes necessary on a long run has to fit in there as well. Daydreaming moves beyond opportunity to straight necessity. A wandering mind is a means of survival, trying to will distraction to reality in order to dull the pain.

This is a long-winded, winding path to where my mind started out this morning--where dreams and will meet. That itch or impulse to act on a dream, to will it into reality. To bring a fantastic notion, through vision, planning, work, into something you make happen.

And that's where I like to spend my time and mind: on making something out of my waking dreams.

Shoot the Moon

Neil Armstrong had some stones. Imagine chilling under the stars in the 1930s throwing out dreams and aspirations and a kid says, "Yeah, I'm gonna walk on the moon."

The same kid laying that track down for parents or teachers and the hollow smiles-turned straight ridicule that must have come his way. Imagine the naysayers when Neil actually rocked his lunar hops.

It's one thing to have the stones to dream big. The drive and wherewithal to keep at it and build the foundation and means to get to your dream isn't something that most folks can claim to have come close to.

I'm not sure what that means to most of us who have jobs that never occur to the kid-version of ourselves, but I'm pretty sure that following dreams isn't the same as your present or desired job title.  It's more a matter of allowing yourself to be led by wonder, at whatever age, and then following the path it lays out before you. It's letting your soul guide your actions rather than just going through the motions and collecting a paycheck. It's maintaining a child-like approach to "what-am-I-going-to-do-today?" and backing it up with the focus that transforms it from daydream to blueprint.

It's cool to be around people who are that creativity and vision and fun and follow-through. It's cool when we can occasionally, even for a glimpse, be one of those people. It's something to work towards every day.

Re-reading the Dhammapada of late, a passage on radiant presence:

However young,
The seeker who sets out upon the way
Shines bright over the world.

But day and night
The person who is awake
Shines in the radiance of the spirit.

As someone who stares at an increasing number of gray hairs in the beard when I look in the mirror, I think I'd add "However old" to the opening. People grow and change. Dreams grow and change. Here's hoping they grow and change together.