EVERYONE'S MYSTIC ISLAND

Once upon a time, a long time and way ago, there was this tiny green island. It doesn't appear in anyone's map, and yet it floats somewhere on everyone's map. It's that ever-so-brief mooring during our journey that we call for lack of a fuller name: Childhood.

Small islands in large oceans are rarely for settlement; mostly for taking on provisions for the rest of the trip. But provisions which need to have some heft and substance to them. For instance -- some truths to hold fast in storms, a few convictions to follow even through headwinds, and shores to see and seek no matter how dark the nights may grow. Most seafarers will look back and count these cargoes as among their life-journey's most indispensable.

So while Thomas Wolfe warned us, "You can never go home again...," even he learned that home and childhood are not places you go to. More places you carry with you. Which is perhaps why conversations in senior homes in front of the evening television set are accented with an occasional sigh.

Watching "The Simpsons" version of family life is a time warp from "Father Knows Best." Reading that Time Magazine's most-influential list features Lady GaGa, Sarah Palin,Taylor Swift and Glenn Beck is hard to reconcile with names from earlier years like FDR, Churchill, Gandhi and Billy Graham. As it turns out, most of the folks I know here don't really try.

"This is their world now," smiled my friend, "I only live in it!" Not spoken with cynicism; perhaps stoicism. Yes, that was it. A lenient but proud been-there-done-that stoicism. Just then his son came in with his two teen daughters. Daughters raised on a menu of Simpsons and GaGa's. And yet to them, Grandpa wasn't really old and torpid; he was, well, he was fun. Fun in a wispy way they don't find on their video games or in their reality shows.

I sat back feeling really good. Because watching the playful interaction, I came to the encouraging conclusion: It was still both their world. And for both their sake, that's a very good thing...!