Halfway

So, here you are.

Yup, here I am.

So, here is… where?

Here.

Here…?

(Blackout).

If I were to write a play on how I feel now that I have reached what may be my life's halfway mark (that would be nice, if that's the way this year turns out to be: the halfway mark), it would be a very short performance. Every week when I set myself in front of the computer to write my article for this column, I stare into space for a few moments listening to myself, trying to figure out what's affecting me the most at the moment and if that would be worth a couple of minutes of the reader's life. Well, today I know that the following is what's been eating me up lately, and it's worth all the world to me.

So I am here. Next to me, sleeping on the mattresses on the floor are a good woman and three wonderful children. Somewhere not too far from here are two equally wonderful children and in my mind all of them are together right here with me right now, as they always have been since they came into my life. Hundreds of stories and thousands of photographs and a million triumphs and regrets and 35 years later, they're all I have that truly matters to me. They will be right here tomorrow when I take that long drive home, they will be right here the next time I take a bow in front of an audience and the next time I curl up in a corner in shame. Nothing can take them away from me, as there is nothing that can take me away from them.

They say that a man's life is divided into 7-year phases – the first 7 years I was introduced to the world I live in; the next 7 I tried to fit in, 14-21 I looked for my own specific spot in this universe, all of the 4^th phase I questioned my choices as much as I believed them, and the last 7 years I tried to realize what the point of it all is.

Today I begin the 6^th phase knowing what truly matters to me and the rest of my life: that beautiful woman who has shared my life since I began believing and questioning my choices and all through out the years when I was trying to figure out what this is all about. And the 5 wonderful children who are at different 7-year phases themselves: two of them just woke up and game me a hug and a kiss and said, "Happy birthday, Papa," while the same message just came in on my mobile phone from the eldest of the five.

(Lights on)

Yes, right here.

But really, where's that?

(Freeze.)

Thirty five years seem to have passed all too quickly, and I know the rest of my life will be over in the blink of the universal eye. But that's ok, everything's gonna be alright. Because now I know that this is what it's all about: The people I love with all my heart and the people who have loved all of me with all of theirs. And nothing else. I will hold their hands and face the rest of our lives together, no matter what.