I am filled with joy this morning as I eat a nine-month old salt bagel. 

I hear you, “Really? Nine-months old?” 

Well, it is actually eight months and about twenty days. More specific than this morning’s blog warrants. The age of the bagel really isn’t my focal point. 

I feel joy because yesterday I ate the last of my stash of bagels that I bought in New Jersey near the end of August. We were visiting my son Oliver and his girlfriend Tess’s family at their place on Ventnor Island on the coast. It was a wonderful capstone to a glorious summer and I celebrated by buying five dozen sesame seed bagels.

Yep, five dozen. Specifically, each dozen was actually a baker’s dozen, so thirteen. And they threw an extra one in for each dozen though I don’t know why. And they gave me a few extra because I had to wait while they finished making them in the back.

I brought them home in paper bags, wrapped them each in foil, and froze them in our basement freezer basket. It ‘s not too much different from how my friend Mark stores his venison, packing the freezer tightly with individually wrapped packs. 

The main difference: Mark hunts deer. I hunt bagels.

Yesterday was a bit less joyous, though honestly the memory of that weekend with Tess’s parents Steve and Lara, their generosity, going out on their boat, jumping into the Atlantic Ocean and trying to body surf, that memory was pulled right into my vision, as if it was still eighty degrees and sunny outside, that was all pure joy.

Today’s bagel was not part of that hoard. It is an older bagel, lost in the freezer drawer under our refrigerator in our kitchen. It was in a paper bag with the word “Salt” written on it.

New Jersey bagels get brown paper bags, every time as far as I can tell. 

Today’s bagel was unexpected, hidden as it was, still a New Jersey bagel, still infused with its own memories, these equally as precious.

That time I only bought twelve (thirteen), stopping at a bagel shop on a two lane New Jersey byway, driving home on May fifteenth after catching my son Oliver on his hike of the Appalachian Trail this past May. 

There is no way I could remember that date except that Oliver kept a detailed blog of his own of that hike. I pulled up May fifteenth and read his entry, instantly back in the moment, getting up early, driving five hours on back roads because I had the time, meeting him near Great Barrington, Massachusetts to bring him the pack I bought to hike with him four weeks before in Virginia, his pack having broken earlier that week.

I drove to see him a couple times after that week of hiking together in Virginia, each time relishing the chance to be a dad with time to give. 

I have always loved being a dad but have not always had the time to do such dad stuff. Since my retirement, though, I have found more of this time. Hiking with Oliver on the Appalachian Trail. Driving with Anna out to her new home in Denver. Helping my son Jack and his fiancé Ellie move from Michigan to their home now in Pittsburgh. Traveling to Italy to visit my son Theordore for his freshman year abroad in Florence. 

Until I retired from teaching these moments would not have been possible. Wendy and I took turns as the kids grew up, often splitting time, and with her schedule easier to adjust, Wendy taking over more of getting to the kids events and helping them with college. 

As many perks (summer vacation, for instance) as teaching brought, allowing me flexibility to take time off was not one of them. We got three personal days a year to take without cause, for our longish family trips to Indiana, Ohio and Chicago, for example or that I saved up for a holiday visit to Disney. 

So, as our kids grew up I missed being with them at certain events and points in their lives. 

Now, though, my schedule much more open, I’ve had the chance to be with them more often, even as they now live further away. To build memories with them as adults.

After my week-long hike with Oliver on the AT, leaving him in Shenandoah National Park and driving home, I stopped at a McDonalds to go to the bathroom. As I got back to my car a poem popped into my head and I jotted it down quickly in my notebook before I drove the three hours home listening to Gregory Alan Isakov and reliving memories from the trip.

That poem, AT, became the second post on this website of mine, the first of the Poet Projects as I’ve called them, poems I write and post without a lot of revision, as I do with these blog entries.

That poem, however, had a plethora of revision, eventually whittled down to its core that bagel day on May fifteenth as I hiked back to my car, after having continued a mile with Oliver as he kept going on the AT. I spoke the poem out loud as I walked by myself, testing out phrasings and intonation, quieting as I passed others on the trail.

From that first jotting at McDonald’s only one line had not become wood shavings: “between raising a boy and knowing a man”. 

The recognition I had that day in Virginia still catches me off guard, brings tears and a thickness to my throat, not just for my relationship with Oliver, but for Anna and Jack and Theodore as well. For my relationship with my own mom and dad, and that such a moment exists for all dads, and moms, for all sons and daughters, that there is a turning point on each complex familial journey that deserves recognition. 

Finding this bagel today, hidden under frozen ravioli and popsicles and ice packs, waking as I did with a list of laundry and cleaning and exercising as I always do, finding this bagel was also finding those moments, recognizing that I’m climbing different mountains now, crisscrossing the forest on trails and paths leading all sorts of ways, whispering poems out loud, bread crumbs back to crossroads and mountain passes and hugs and tears and boundless joy.