“You think it’s possible that no matter who we think we are at any given time in our lives, ultimately we never stop changing?” I ask.

Robin shoots me a quizzical glance. “Where did that come from?”

“Just wondering.”

She looks back at the highway. “I guess. Maybe it’s a good thing. It could be kind of boring to be the same person your whole life.”

In twenty years, we can ask Arno. If there’s one person who’ll never change . . .

We enter a long blind curve in the shadow of a hill that blocks the afternoon sun. Robin’s shoulders are hunched while she concentrates on steering. We’ll spend a week on Long Island and then head to Boston, but the trip to Europe in August is on hold. There’s too much that needs to be done here. Instead of trying to end the war, Nixon’s expanded it into Cambodia. Two weeks ago, National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio actually shot and killed four college students who were protesting. The Student Mobilization Committee is calling for a referendum next November asking Massachusetts voters to support an immediate end of the war. They’ll need a minimum of forty-eight thousand registered voters to sign petitions to get the referendum on the ballot, but the SMC leaders want to get at least a hundred thousand signatures, and hopefully more, to make a point. So that’s what we’ll be doing this summer.

We come out of the curve, back into the sunlight and onto a long straightaway that leads toward some distant low green mountains. Off to the right is a sun-washed red barn, and beyond it broad fields with long, straight rows of brown dirt topped with thin green sprouts. It’s the beginning of another summer. How many times last summer did I escape disaster by the skin of my teeth, whether it was from Vietnam, border guards, gangs of hoods, OD’ing on pills, or nearly losing Robin?

(Arno’s right. I really have been a lucky fuck. Not only because of the Semi-Miraculous Transformation, but for reasons even the I Ching probably can’t explain.)

Barry’s death is still a throbbing ache, but other events from last summer seem like distant memories — some of them funny, some frightening, some sad, and some astonishing. It’s crazy how much has changed. Can today truly be the first day of the rest of your life? Yeah, I think I’m probably living proof that it can. Maybe that’s what life is — a whole series of first days.

Just as long as we never forget how incredibly lucky we are to be alive.

Author’s Note