Everyday Canvas

The Best Years

Prompt: What was the best year of your life?

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It is hard to choose. I usually recall incidences rather than the years.

We can never really know what the best years are. In youth, one has the strength of the body, but also the lack of life experience. When we get enough experience to make heads and tails of everything, then the body starts going down and you lose people along the way.

If I have to pick though, I guess when I was nineteen was a very good year. I was in college and very hopeful and happy with where I was, but then when I was 26, I had my first son, and then when I was 32, I had the second son. They were all good years, all with some difficulties, but then, I can’t pinpoint a year without any difficulties or annoyances. But those three years were the best.

Second to them, is the year I met and married my husband when I was 22. I count it second to the above three, only because I had to fight my mother tooth and nail to get her to agree to our marriage. That took a lot out of me, and that is why it wasn’t the best year. Otherwise, if I didn’t have to fight so hard for my choices, it would have been the best year.

My present few years are not so bad either since my husband and I have been together about 53 years, and we always had a good relationship. Now that we are old, aging takes a bit of a toll on our everyday lives, such as we can’t travel like we used to, and we have to deal with our creaking and croaking bodies. Other than that, I would count the last twenty or so years as best, too, since vocational and child-raising problems are left behind and we have what we need. Nothing in excess to become a problem but enough of everything to keep us going.