May in Princeton arrives through woven rain and brief, precious sunlight. My birthday sits between spring and summer, surrounded by memories like falling blossom. The garden gate has carried more than twenty years of weather. Faded timber, old vine marks, and carpenter-bee holes give it a quiet dignity.
A pressure washer lifts away dirt and steel wool brings back the grain. I fill the holes, wait through rain, sand again in sunlight, treat the timber, and finally work tung oil into the surface. The grain grows warm beneath my fingers. Handwork becomes a restorative ritual: cleaning away fatigue, exposing what is true, adding resilience, and allowing beauty to return. Reading, thought, writing, movement, and nourishment can care for a life in much the same way.
I love long conversations with my daughter. Her sensitivity is clear and quick as a spring stream. When she talks about the love, conflict, and friendship of adolescence, I remember my own youth. Recently she said softly that she missed Bob, a former classmate whose gentleness stood apart from the usual noise of boys that age. They laughed, argued, misunderstood one another, and made peace again.
Then distance arrived when we moved. She remembers him with happiness and a little ache. Early affection has no elaborate calculation, only the recognition of temperament, shared play, and small happiness. Meeting is an unexpected gift; separation is one of life's recurring movements.
We separate from parents, friends, partners, children, and eventually everyone we have loved or resisted. Yet time together leaves a grain inside us, like the marks in wood, proof that we felt the world's warmth. Separation may not be the final word. Paths sometimes cross again, and people appear in forms we could not have imagined.
The road behind, with all its bends and light, has made the present self. Ahead, possibility remains open. May wind moves across the restored gate, the oiled wood shines, and for a moment my heartbeat seems to answer the world.