teen angst vs nanny's wisdom

spoiler alert: we're still here

That summer after granddad died I live with my Nanny

Both of us were in uncharted territory.

I was a young man, finished high school.

She was newly widowed.

We looked after each other.

I used to pass out in his chair during my lunch breaks. I was working for my uncle in my Granddad’s campground.

That was the summer the mine collapsed. I was asleep in his chair when it happened. Twenty six men lost their lives a mere fifty miles from where I slept.

Fires from Quebec sent so much smoke that the sky was an apocalyptic orange for weeks.

While the news told of horrors and lost fathers crushed underground, I could hear distant chainsaws clear cutting huge swaths of land across the lake. They cut so much I could see the scar from my granddad’s chair.

I was certain that the world was coming to an end.

Living reach the age of forty?

That seemed absurd.

Well Jimmy, with Hitler and the war things were pretty bleak when I was young. When I was your age though? I was a mom. I had better things to do t…