Postcard to myself

Special Instruction to the Postmaster:  Please go back some 40 years and deliver the following to a Kenny Rideout who is about to enter high school and might be worried about what the future will bring.

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Happy Easter, Kenny.  Don't worry - we don't become religious over the years.  However, we do find the pleasure and satisfaction of marking the special days that connect us with family and connect us over time with tradition.  The smell of the home cooked meal in your future will remind you of the meal your own mother is cooking you right now.  It won't be identical but it will be a variation on a theme.  Just as your own family in which you are the Dad is not the same as the one you have right now where you are one of two kids.  Once again, it will be a variation on a theme.  Even though it is only the four of you this year, you will crowd around the small kitchen table and eat the food that connects us over time.  You have a lovely wife and two wonderful children (both slightly older than you are now!).  The life you have is not one you would have ever imagined.  Right now, you think living in the suburbs with a home and a yard to take care of is lame.   You think reveling in your role as husband and father is so quotidian as to be 'cringe' (even though that's not a thing to say in the 80's, trust me, it's totally hip in the 2020's).  Most surprising of all, you are a high school teacher.  You, who imaged changing the world and living a life most unconventional, will enjoy an immense satisfaction is fulfilling a role in society that has almost no down side.  Your morals are uncompromised: you are not making money by fulfilling a corporate directive or serving some vague, fadish mission.  Instead, you try (and sometimes succeed) in introducing the beauty of science to the youth of today so as to impact the tomorrow in an unknown but positive way.

Happy Easter, Kenny - your future is grand!  Tell your parents and your little brother you love them and I will do the same to your wife and kids in the future.

Sincerely,

Future You