Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?

A reflection on the year I would not re-live, but still return to.

I would not step back into any year.
Not one.

But sometimes a year steps back into you.

1981 did that to me—
by sliding quietly out of a manila folder in my basement one afternoon
and landing in my hands like it had been waiting for me to notice.

The clipping was from the Door County Advocate.
Two Gibraltar seniors with art scholarships.
My name printed beside plans to study architecture at UW–Milwaukee.
A future that looked neat, respectable, airtight.

And in the photo, those enormous glasses covering half my face—
a boy still guessing at himself.

---

I. The Boy in the Photograph

Back then I pictured myself shaping skylines—clean lines, sharp corners, everything arranged just so.
The kind of future adults nod at without needing the rest of the story.

Two years later I was in a basement drafting room, tracing blueprints through the soft sting of chemical fumes.
Large sheets of Mylar carrying other people’s ideas slid across my table—no one waiting for mine.

After a while, the work felt less like a path forward and more like a cage with good lighting.

So I drifted.
Painting, drawing, almost finishing psychology—right up until they placed a scalpel and a mouse brain in front of me and I realized, again, I had wandered into the wrong room.

Then one afternoon, in a lecture hall whose name I no longer remember, Dr. David Baker said:

“Kids don’t make art.
They manipulate material to learn how to be more human.”

The line arrived quietly—
like a man stepping into a room
and moving the furniture an inch at a time.

---

II. The Face in the Stone

Recently my friend Jay Loomis sent me a photo he took in the woods outside Providence:
a rock with the soft beginnings of a face pushing through stone.
Not finished.
Not polished.
Just beginning to appear.

Jay and I go back decades, to a youth group with strong, steady leadership where I helped as a volunteer.
We connected easily—one of those pairings where you think you’re offering guidance, only to realize the younger one is already running ahead.
Jay could out-think, out-play, and out-quiet most of us without trying.

I remember an afternoon at a sub shop when a homeless man stepped in and asked if any of us could help with food.
My wallet tightened—fear dressed up as caution.
Before I collected myself, Jay reached for a twenty and passed it to the man as simply as you’d hand someone a pen.

“Get what you need. Bring back the change.”

No hesitation.
No performance.
Just a heart moving freely in the world.

It startled me—
showed me how far I still had to grow,
how much loosening was yet to be done in me.

That stone face Jay found felt like a reminder:
we are shaped slowly,
through mercies we did not expect,
and by people we never expected to learn from.

---

III. The Man Still Half-Drawn

And then there is the unfinished self-portrait I drew early in my teaching years.
One eye rendered, the other waiting.
A hand suggested, not declared.
A face mid-sentence.

I did not know it then, but I was drawing the truth:

I am not finished.

Becoming takes the long road.
It winds through architecture studios, psychology labs, drafting tables, mouse brains, marriages, children, classrooms full of teenagers, and the quiet mercy of people who see a shape forming before you can see it yourself.

Without 1981—
I would not have taught.
I would not have Henry or Lucy.
Or Laura, Sam, Sara, or Gibby.
Or this imperfect, surprising, good life.

So no, I would not re-live that year.
But I return to it.

Some years do not ask to be repeated.
They ask to be honored—
for the way they shape us quietly,
like a face pressing its way out of stone.

---

Just Wondering…

Sometimes I think the past is not finished speaking—
that certain years sit patiently in old folders
until we are ready to listen.

---

Tags

#formation #story #memory #becominghuman #artlife #1981 #unfinished #spiritualjourney #lifearc #reflection