Woke up early this morning after spending the night ruminating over the opinion of value letter to the publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT), and the biggest bank on Planet Earth. They’re partners in a large, suburban development that had been largely sold off a few years back. Except they haven’t been able to sell, or willing to discount, a relatively small and unwanted piece I’ve been hired to sell. The out-lot was built as a kind of showroom property, which was an extremely specialized and, ultimately, unleasable use. For several years, because of the property’s frontage on a busy road, they tried marketing the space for retail in what was primarily an industrial area. The concept never worked and varying degrees of high vacancy have persisted making a reasonable sale a difficult proposition.

The leasing team, one of them my listing partner and quasi-boss for the investment sale, L, had altered their marketing plan. Their search was broadened to include prospective office and office/warehouse tenants. A medical tenant and a restaurant supply store have recently signed leases; there is a still-stubborn thirty percent vacancy that I am calling upside in the offering memorandum.

My goal with the letter is to convince the clients, who are hoping to finally close out the partnership, to aggressively respond to the first offer we received. Just underway in marketing, we are only a few steps into our very thorough planning, and trying like heck not to blow what is, in brokerage, an ever-tenuous veil of credibility with the clients.

The circumstance is a bit strange. Both clients are sizable institutions that normally sell large and first-class assets to other sizable entities. The brokers they hire make a market through procuring competing all-cash bids in what has been a very frothy investment market with ever-lowering interest rates. But these two A-List clients have found themselves with a relatively miniscule C-List property in an entrepreneurial investor market that has been turned upside down post the 2008/2009 financial crisis. Welcome to my world. Also, I turned fifty today.

*image by DALL-E 3 | inspired by this essay*

I am as new to the clients as they are to me. The institutional relationships are important to my recently moved-to firm. I was at my old firm for close to twenty years. L is also new to me, and a VIP in the industrial practice, an area I am interested in moving into. For twenty years, suburban Main Street retail was my area of expertise, but the world needs more warehousing and fewer stores. This trend has accelerated exponentially in the era of shopping by smartphone. And to be frank, America is overrun by shopping centers. But out of habit or laziness or I don’t know what, I have stuck with my market and my clients, admittedly, for too long. Perhaps this deal and these new relationships will help ease a career transition into the industrial sector, although my existing clients are keeping me plenty busy as the market continues its slide against them. And me.

I’m not sure what age I was when the skill of ruminating settled in. Solving conundrums used to come as quickly as files snapping open on a new computer. Now though… picture a ten-year-old computer rendering video; I leave the machine on overnight and hope the work is done at sunrise. That’s after stumbling over our dogs on the way to the bathroom more than once a night.

This morning I found that Bailey, our beloved but aged golden retriever, had left me a large, chunky pile of vomit at the bathroom door. Quite a thoughtful birthday gift considering that I walked him outside at 2:30 this morning. If I had just let him out and gone back to bed, he would have wandered into the woods and barked until sunrise. The equivalent of ninety-one human years old, he barks aimlessly into the void.

After a one-eyed, head scratching meander into the kitchen, I fumble with the coffee maker and sip the bitters until the other eye opens. I griddle three pieces of bacon, two for Junior, one for me, toss on two thick sourdough slices to join the sizzle, put out the fresh OJ and sliced honeydew, and put on the French Open. Djokovic lost 6-0 in the third and final set to Thiem. It has been a hard year for Djoker, who seems not a lost soul, just a tired soul. I can feel it in his unusually heavy eyes and slumping shoulders.

Junior’s door opening resonates in the kitchen. His nine-year-old feet patter him down the hallway, then the staircase, his bedhead-hair bouncing on its ends past the banister.

"Chocolate Chex?" I ask.

"…ok…" falls from his mouth in a yawn.

"Milk or no milk?"

"…ok…"

He grabs the iPad and lies in the front room while I finish griddling. We all have our drugs; I have caffeine and tennis, he has Minecraft. It’s game-on already and I’m too pre-occupied to go to battle over devices. Breakfast readied, my coffee half drunk, I tell him I'm going to the bedroom (also the office) to work on a letter, but to come to the table and eat. He’s got to be ready for his ride to school and I’m tallying time.

"...ok..." seeps out his mouth, and I worry he hears me about as well as the dog.

My day begins with the end in mind, both because of my age and the plane we’re catching to Italy at 4:50 this afternoon. Yes, Italy! In my mind, the word comes alive with a lively, Italian accent and grapevines lining Tuscan hills and small butcher shops and bakeries and florists and the Mediterranean winking with sunshine.

Junior and I are heading overseas for ten days with N, my wife, Junior’s mom, in Rome and then we’re driving to the Amalfi coast. An incredible anniversary and birthday present that she put together a few weeks ago. She’s been in Rome on business this week. We’re meeting there and celebrating, seeing a part of the world that still appreciates the beauty of small.

But work… Work hasn’t been an easy go in these past years. Markets changed and I didn’t change with them. There are reasons, some of them purposeful, some not. A few years back, though, I did make a big change and changed firms with an eye toward a future I didn’t know, but that could possibly make me… happier…

Now, finally, the stars might be aligning, but just as likely, it might be more of the same. Everything feels heads or tails. Either way, leaving for vacation has left me worried. But fifty. Fifty! says the jubilant Italian. A milestone.

I’ve never thought of a birthday as a milestone. Except for this one. Age may only be a number, but fifty is no less than a floor drop. I remind myself that I’m lucky to have made it to fifty, not because I was ill or jumped motorcycles for a living, but because it isn’t all that long ago in human history that fifty equated to a long life. For some odd reason, the age comes to me as a halfway marker, even though living to one hundred isn’t likely. Maybe fifty is a time when slowing down and reflecting can really mean something, an accounting for where I’ve been, for determining what I know, for admitting that what I know is not really much at all. Ultimately, I sense a real contemplation coming, what to do differently and what to do the same.

But what an incredible gesture by the love of my life, to share my birthday, and more importantly, our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary together with our son. She proposed the trip with that coy smile of hers, eyes rolling as if saying that there was no possible way we can all go together. One look at her and I knew all she wanted to hear was, yes. And letting that nine-year-old boy taste pasta hand-rolled right in front of him at one trattoria or another, snorkel in the Mediterranean with his dad, mark this time and that place in our histories instead of letting the day fade away like the last candle on another store-bought cake.

“Ok, we’re going,” I said to N, assuming I’d figure work out and pray it didn’t swallow me up on the trip. That moment of reflection took about ten seconds after looking in her sea-blue eyes.

I begin dictating the letter to the REIT and bank at 8:10. I like to dictate. I pretend the technology is an assistant that only partially understands me, not unlike my kids, or dogs for that matter. So, I speak and correct, speak and correct. Read, edit, think, then the math of pricing and capitalization rate and IRR returns and formatting the tables and so on, and then speak, correct, edit again. Then it's 9:15. Our nanny arrives with her daughter to take Junior to school. I get up to say hello when I notice that I hadn’t cleaned the vomit up yet. The pile weighs more than a small dog.

The email blast I scheduled yesterday for BB, an old and loyal client, hits thousands of inboxes at this very moment. He’s hired me to sell a property that has a long lease, but, so far, has been an underperforming location in small town America. He bought it through me years ago. Not an easy sell these days as investors scatter like rats when it comes to risk. Any imagined risk. BB and I had worked on large, sometimes complicated office and retail deals together before the world crashed. He’s been bailing water ever since.

Replies start pouring in immediately. “Send offering memorandum”, “how do I make an offer”, “quit sending me this shit”. A series of voicemails. All come my way in minutes. Voicemail number one; a man from New Jersey with the name of Grabowski speaks through a wall of phlegm, "Let's see how motivated the seller is. I'll buy that property for sixty off. That’s SIX ZERO. Call me." Sure I will. A letter of intent comes in from another prospect; $X less 30%.

We had just lowered the price. Now the sharks are biting at the bloody water. I had used the low-brow bullet point, Motivated Seller. My mistake, but I didn’t lie.

Get back to the REIT and bank letter. Focus dummy, I tell myself. Check the math. Balance the message. Does it work? I look out the bedroom’s back patio door to the yard for inspiration. Bailey peed on the doorstop.

Phone call. A returned call comes from T, who is the son of prospective buyers for HJ and O’s property. HJ and his brother, O, are career-making clients for me. I was a young man when I met them twenty years ago. T’s Serbian parents are immigrants who made good as roofing contractors and small apartment building owners. T seems sweet natured and instinctive. His parents paid for lunch last week with me and HJ and O. The family is interested in buying the brother’s property, a great piece of real estate but made more for bygone days with its local shops, boutiques, and restaurants.

In today’s investor market, Mom and Pop charm equals RISK. HJ and O will be lucky to get seventy percent of the property’s prior value. Prior Value means before giant banks made the world crash, and, in turn, the Fed pressed interest rates thin as paper. If their property had national tenants backed by corporately guaranteed leases, the property’s price would have risen like circus balloons let loose to the sky. Instead, with its local tenants, imagine those same balloons drifting into a spray of buckshot.

HJ is as smart and tough and demanding as they come. Prior Value and Current Value, a polarized market for a polarized world, these are not easy conversations with him. The new model for our relationship; Steinbrenner and Martin. I’ve been hired and fired and hired again for this assignment. Checking my ego at the door, that isn’t quite the metaphor to use. Hanging the ego on the line like a dusty rug and having it beaten with a stick, that sounds about right.

I like the roofer and his family. The boys are artists. They worked summers on sweltering roofs as teenagers, now they’re apartment managers by day, one a stage director and the other a painter, both at night. T says they are not buyers until they sell two of their apartment buildings. Their equity is primarily in their buildings, and they don't have enough cash on hand until their properties sell. Their dad wants top dollar for the apartment buildings, but still, their bank is underwriting the potential purchase. T is giving me a heads up; their banker is going to call me with questions. I’ll call HJ later and give him the update.

T and his family, their interest is real, but contingent sales are generally not. Not in commercial real estate, anyway. We’re also waiting on an Ohio prospect. Don’t know if he’s real yet. There are two other capable parties circling, although their timing isn’t ideal. But some activity is better than none and I make a quick accounting if I’ve missed any other prospects I could nudge before our flight. Finish the REIT and bank letter first. Send the draft to L for comments or approval.

I emailed the mega-bank and REIT’s prospective buyer last night with follow-up qualification questions. Where does your money come from? It comes from Mr. Gotbucks and friends and family and a few grateful investors. Are you going to finance the acquisition or pay cash? Not sure, small loan if needed, but probably all cash. Probably is probably not a good word with our institutional clients, but small loan will make them feel good enough. They’ve been stuck with this property a long time. The recent leasing is spurring the sale.

E, my teenage daughter comes into the office, smiles, and wraps her arms around me. “Happy birthday, Dad!”

Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you is all I can think.

"Can I get you anything?" she asks.

"It's ok. Knee deep in work... but... if you bring me another cup of coffee..."

"Here, take mine." She uses my Italian sweet cream, not the diet sweet cream. I hate that stuff.

"Are you sure?" I ask.

"It's your birthday, Dad. Take mine."

Sip taken. She makes hers sweeter than mine. Like her, sweeter than me.

Back to the letter. Gently and convincingly encouraging, working toward effectively saying, Trust me even though you don’t know me. Take the deal or close to it. The buyer almost agreed with our value right out of the gate. And he’s credible with a great track record and reputation. Other buyers are either uninterested or so low in their pricing they don’t want to waste time making an offer. Don't press your bets against the market. Take the bird in hand. Cook it and eat if for dinner. The letter is coming together.

Call HJ and update him on T’s call. Tell him I'm fifty today and fuck it, I'm going to Italy. Say it exactly like that.

10:15am. E shows up with pancakes and warm syrup and another smile. A smile deserves another grateful hug.

"Sorry you're so busy," she says.

"It's all good, my girl."

"Are you excited to go?"

"So excited. Wish you and M were coming." M is her older sister.

"Well, I have class and work and-"

"And, well, we can't afford it anyway," I say.

"Yeah, and that..." she says with a twinkle.

11am. Called HJ. HJ said S, the son of HJ’s ex-banker, who is also a broker, called HJ and tried to get him to move off his asking price. S crashed and burned, hitting the wall that is HJ. Again. Told HJ about T, and about not hearing back from Ohio. Ohio isn't real, I tell him. Silence has been their official response, which makes for a pretty lousy conversation. The deal will go to the ex-banker's kid broker unless I press more and dig up more prospects. If I had a little more time, I could get lucky... which is one of the things I’m hoping to do in Italy…

"Have fun kid," HJ says. Kid... wouldn't that be nice. HJ said you can't go wrong anywhere on the Amalfi coast.

"If we don't hear from the Ohio buyer, are we pushing for a deal with the other group?" I ask.

"I want this thing sold," HJ says. Picture firm-jawed resignation.

Should be beautiful music to a broker, but I tell him I’d like more time so the other two prospects can sharpen their pencils. HJ says no. The golf course is calling for a long and final round. HJ had one heck of a run in the real estate world. He bought all his properties half empty in the late ‘80’s, the last big real estate crash before ‘08. He played it as well as he played golf. One of the best amateurs in the world. Watched him qualify for the Western Open when I first met him; the Western Open that is part of the pro tour. He was 55 years old.

Voicemail. Texas broker responding to the email blast. "I noticed there's no co-op commission," he says, a friendly but weary, Texas drawl.

"There is,” I say. “We split the fee." Throw the bath water out, not the baby.

"Ok, I'll get my client to sign the CA. Maybe we can put this together," he says, suddenly youthful.

Youawwl go do that now, and we'll see. Back to the letter. Proofread. Do the numbers feel right? L wanted a recommendation from me on counteroffer terms. Then asks if we should counter higher than the asking price since the buyer is so close. I respond with a non-committal sigh. I tell him I would rather take their price and save the negotiating for more earnest money and shorter contingencies. But I don't know the seller that well yet. Telling mega-bank and REIT what price and terms they should counter at seems out of place for me. L’s client though. He's the boss. Go with it, just don't sound like a self-serving idiot, I tell myself. Say that in Italian, Donta be an IDIOTE!

Another voicemail, woman from Maryland, polite, responding to the email blast. "How do I make an offer?" She has a four-person investor group, thirty percent down, has her own bank for financing, wants to offer ninety percent of $X. Now we're getting somewhere. I write back, “Send me your full contact information, I'll email you a letter of intent template."

I email BB, give him the update; new price hit the market today, bunch of pretenders, but one promising lead… and… I'm meeting my wife in Italy. Taking Junior for a week or so.

"What a wonderful thing to do with your wife and son,” he writes. “Have a great time!"

I love BB. There’s nothing like battling a storm together. He bought the Florida deal. I helped at every level. He said at the closing, "Let's do lots of deals together." Over the cliff we went. Then he said, help me get through this deal. And I said, I can't. Help me through mine.

12:00pm. Letter done. Sent to L. Clock ticking. Lunch. Breath. Eat. Watch tennis for 10 minutes. Halep down a set and 1-5, comes back to 6-5, then loses the next game. Tie breaker. Down 2-5 in the breaker, but she’s a battler’s battler. Phone call from L. He begins, "Hello handsome."

"You need glasses,” I say. “Nobody calls me handsome."

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

I stammer.

He continues, "The letter was great. Really excellent, but... it's funny I would say this because I write long emails, but you write REALLY long emails."

"Well... I guess you're a poet and I'm a novelist."

Now he stammers. "…uh… sure… uh… suppose so… The content is great, but I think I can say it better with less words."

Everyone needs an editor. Have at it, I tell him. Is calling someone in business a poet an insult? What happened in the Halep match?

12:20pm. M, my eldest, just out of college, comes in. "Happy Birthday, Dad!" Big hug. She’s meeting her boyfriend for lunch. Do I want to go? Yes, but can't do it, a million things...

"Sorry,” she says “…and on your birthday…"

"It's all good,” I say. “Maybe I can actually make some money." She heads out, half my age, half my confusion. She doesn't know half of what she doesn’t know.

Another phone call. A man from the email blast with a thick accent that bends R’s like a car sliding around a curve. "Yes, Harrrris, how do I make offer? Is eighty percent of $X ok?" How much financing can I get?”

How do these people have so much money without knowing how to make an offer? "How much equity do you have?" I ask.

"Twenty-five percent down.”

"That won't work."

"Ok. Twenty-seven percent down."

"That won't either. For this deal you'd need thirty."

"Would my banker do it?"

It takes everything in me not to say, How the hell should I know? but I don't. I say, "Have him call me."

"He only wants to talk if I have a contract."

"You can't get a contract unless we know you can finance it. It's chicken or the egg. Have him call me."

"Ok."

The chicken or the egg thing transcends all cultures.

1:45pm. Junior gets home from school. "Oh yeah," his voice raises from the kitchen. "Happy birthday, Dad!" echoes through the house. "I forgot!" He laughs. E laughs with him.

My wife texts with a list. Thank God, a list. I'm useless without them. Need RAM. Mental RAM. Firmware update. Fifty years old. Put me out to the curb, time for a new model. I get up from the decorative office chair that destroys my seventy-five-year-old back. Two sessions at the acupuncturist this week and its only Wednesday. She's a miracle worker. I'd like to be an acupuncturist. I asked her at the end of yesterday’s session, finally standing and walking straight, "How do you become an acupuncturist?"

"In China, I think it's three years of school. I was also a doctor in China, but not here. Just acupuncture. So seven years total," she says in the humblest way anyone that smart can.

Seven years of school... that would put me at fifty-seven years old and about $400,000 more in debt... Two things cross my mind; the first, at some point is the level of debt so utterly ridiculous that it doesn't matter? The second, I’m too old to go back to school. Then a third question; what happened in the Halep match? That amount of hustle, you can never count her out. Then again, anyone can lose. At any time.

2pm. Waiting on L's edit of my letter for the REIT and mega-bank deal. I need time to proof and send to the seller. In the back of my mind, the need to leave for the airport in thirty minutes is buzzing like an alarm I’m not hearing. Also, need to answer email requests for offering memorandums for every property I’m marketing. Done. Voicemail. Ignore, don't recognize the number. Attend to the short, final packing list that requires a half mile of walking back and forth from the kitchen and the office/bedroom. At least a quarter mile was entering one of the rooms and turning in circles, thinking that if I spin long and slow enough, I might remember what I came in there for. If the list was much longer, I'd probably just stand in the center and bark like our geriatric golden retriever until somebody came and helped me.

List items assembled, my suitcase is brimming with more clothes than I need, probably from subconsciously considering not coming back from Italy.

2:15pm. Junior is in shorts and his bare feet, doing his best impression of Mowgli preparing for international travel. Blood pressure rises. I calmly describe the step-by-step process of dressing for overseas travel to a fourth grader. I end the dissertation with a Clint Eastwood-eque, whispery grumble, ...and don't even think about arguing with me..., reminding him, this is a fifty-year-old temper under pressure, the most powerful temper you've ever seen, and the question you've got to ask yourself is, should I listen to my father? Well, should you, punk? He does. M smiles. She's driving us to the airport at 2:30.

2:25pm. L's email comes through. I'm packed like I'm going on safari. Computer shut down, laptop in the bag, I’m speed-reading the document on my phone screen. The font size makes me feel like I'm failing the eye exam at the drivers’ license facility. But Junior is ready, instructions followed, and he is revved up. "Are you excited, Dad? I am so excited. How long is the flight?"

"I'm not totally-"

"I mean how many hours?"

"I mean I don't know. Hold on buddy, we'll talk about it, but I've got to handle one last thing."

Back to L's email; it’s no shorter than mine. As an editor, he makes a pretty good broker. He’s on the road as well, prefacing the email that his bullet points are a mess, which implies that I need to thoroughly edit his edit before I send the email to two of the largest real estate institutions in the United States on behalf of our growing and public firm for my listing partner who is also the head of our national industrial practice that I want to enter into because the world of retail has been, and I say this to myself with full Italian accent, interrupted! Can there be a more innocuous and inaccurately polite word than interrupted for the catastrophe that happens when a tidal wave of technology renders an entire sector antiquated at best, obsolete at worst? I say it out loud, "INTERRRRUPTEDDD" and Junior looks at me like I’m losing my mind.

Standing in the kitchen, somewhere in the background, Junior is asking, “How long, Dad? How long is the airplane ride? Dad? Dad? How long?” M tells Junior that Dad probably isn't going to answer.

I see some typos in my squinting review of the letter. This is going to take some time. M, you're driving. Junior, he is still talking, or asking, or answering himself with me interjecting, "hold on buddy.” This continues in the car. He’s now playing both parts, him and me. He makes me sound half-rational, which is more than I feel.

2:45pm. How to edit a critical document on an iPhone from the road:

1. Hit Reply so a new email is created

2. Scroll to needed verbiage

3. Press down firmly and drag blue highlighting over the verbiage so it can be copied

4. Double tap the screen several clumsy times with the same force that Moe might poke Curly in the eye and choose Copy

5. Open a new email and poke Curly in the eye again until you can paste what you’ve copied

6. Close original email

7. Scan each line of a two-page letter on a five-inch phone with a font size that an amoeba might find disconcerting and look for repeated words, out of place commas, and clarity of thought and intent

8. Check for overstepping bounds, but effectively leading a horse to water

9. Wonder, at seventy-five miles per hour in semi-congested traffic with a twenty-four-year-old daughter checking just how good the brakes on the SUV are, if the formatting of the bullet points will show correctly on a computer screen

10. Hope the airport valet has a defibrillator

3:15pm. Unload luggage at the airport. Check for the two-hundredth time that I have wallet, passports, boarding passes and… shit… what am I forgetting? Too late now. Hug and kiss daughter goodbye. Ask her not to kill the dogs. Scan letter one more time.

3:25pm. Hit send just as the curbside valet is ticketing our bags. Give Junior a big smile and scruff of the hair. We are going to ITALY!

3:30pm. Receive email from L that a conference call has been scheduled for 3:45 with mega-bank and REIT while we are in a security line with a police dog taking an efficient and dutiful sniff of my crotch. There are few things that have been more effective at bringing me into the present moment. A sign reads, DO NOT PET DOG. I can understand that.

3:35pm. Junior says, "I have to go to the bathroom, Dad." I look down the airport corridor like a man looking for the exit in a burning building. Bathroom found. Boy taken.

3:39pm. "I'm hungry,” Junior says. “When do we eat lunch?"

"You didn't eat lunch?!"

"I did. I need another one."

Gauging the risk and reward of taking a hungry nine-year-old on an international flight versus being late for a can’t miss conference call, I can feel all clocks ticking; real ones, ones on phones, on tablets, on walls, mostly the one in my head. We enter the line at the greatest single airport tenancy in the history of airport leasing, Frontera Grill.

My famished son asks, "Do they have tacos?"

I am just a small figure beneath the massive arms of Big Ben. In four minutes, I need to be waxing brokerage poetry on a conference call. The menu at Frontera Grill reads like the basket ingredients on Chopped. One of the foremost gourmet Mexican restaurants in America does not have tacos.

"How about poblano chicken with chipotle mayo?" I ask.

Junior looks at me as if the question is so stupid it doesn’t deserve a response. We find a Burrito Beach and get him a chicken and rice bowl. Tacos must be out of season.

3:43pm. I need to dial into the conference call in the middle of the terminal with the equivalent of rush hour traffic walking hurriedly and obliviously by in every possible direction. On my phone, I switch between the calendar app and the phone dialer ten times because I can't seem to commit the conference call password number to memory.

3:44pm. The dial-in process has started over again. I entered the wrong password and gave up listening to the automated lady tell me she doesn’t understand my request while I’m trying to find a seat for Junior at the gate.

3:45pm. Successfully dialed in, I have the phone placed on an arm rest while scouring my backpack for headphones. I hear L ask repeatedly, “…hello? …hello?” until I plug in the headphones. We conduct the call.

4:10pm: We hang up. Things are agreed to. I tell them I’ll inform the buyer that we will do X if they do Y. This should seal the deal.

4:20pm: I dictate into the phone the final terms along with a note to the buyer that I’m traveling to Italy and can be reached, if necessary, otherwise he should reply that he’s in agreement. I check the sentence. It flatly states that the buyer should refry in cement. Is this arrythmia I feel or just a straight-on cardiac event? I swing the cursor into place and finish the rest with my whirling thumbs, “The lawyers will draw up the contract, should have a first draft in a week or so.” The note is proofed yet again and sent.

4:25pm: We board the plane. Junior is almost skipping down the aisle. I’m using various headrests to keep me upright.

4:27pm: Buyer emails back, “We are in agreement. Enjoy Italy. Talk soon.” I forward the email to L and the mega-bank and the REIT. Regret sinks in; the forwarded note mentions me going on vacation.

4:37pm: Phone off. We depart for Italy.

4:40pm Junior’s nose is pressed to the window. He keeps turning his head toward me and then back out to the shrinking skyscrapers and rooftops and roads fading in the clouds. I see in his bright eyes the unweighted wonder of youth.

4:45pm: Junior asks for the iPad. I dig it out of the backpack and give him my headphones.

4:48pm: Eyes closed, I see Halep sliding into a corner on the red clay, its dust staining up her straining legs. Forehand struck with her long, sighing breath through the ball and the stadium echos with her desperate scramble back toward middle ground. The end coming. The outcome, I still don’t know.

Turning Fifty: 2017

Naked Lady Near the Metal Shed

Summer, Years Ago