A Lifetime Over Fried Olives

Sometimes You See It All in a Glimpse

We ate last night at Wildair, a small place on the Lower East Side with elevated bar food served on small plates of very heavy, but inventive bites.

The table beside us held a trinity of young people. How young, I couldn’t tell. They seemed like a mature 25 at most. They talked about finding freelance work and trying to figure out taxes with tons of W-2s, apartments, and all that early life stuff that young people navigate in the city. They looked great, and somehow not in the stamp of fashion Instagram that I see everywhere these days. Even at that age, they looked like themselves: Original, fashionable, earnest, cute.

In five years they’ll be talking early career stuff, compromises between creativity and money, and then, in a couple of years, they’ll be going to each other’s weddings. In five more years, children and schools. Most will move away then. More room and better schools in River Towns or New Jersey. Backyard BBQs with crying kids and manic talk about “not missing the city at all, not one bit, really!”

The rest will stay and raise their kids in the gauntlet of New York City. Some of them have been talking about being broke all these years but will then reveal that they’re rich, either through a country house, a huge new apartment, or tuition at a private school or all of the above. Some will start to crush it in their careers. Others will move sideways across jobs. 

Ten years later, the divorces, brought on by affairs, drunkenness, or boredom. Then college applications for the kids. The first, shocking funerals. The great sorting. The tired years transition into the very tired years. Back aches. Bad knees. Nicer vacations. Layoffs. Bodies and careers in decline for most. Longful looks back. Regrets. Hopes winnowing down. A resorting. Sick parents. More funerals.

Rejuvenated hobbies. Last dashes into writing, acting, music, whatever was waylaid by those day jobs that cut short the nights at Wildair.

And then, early dinners beside their younger selves, gazing at a partner whom you’ve loved through the years and whom you know better than you know yourself, who still surprises you and fills you with gratitude. And a small smile for the years ahead of you and everyone, sat too close, beside you.