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I ran to the park this morning in a light rain that was perfect for April. 

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The new growth on the plants vibrated with color and life under the gray skies. 

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Not everyone made it through the winter, sadly, including this clump of heather. 

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I was a little bit hungover from a pre-reunion party I went to at my friend Jessica's house in Park Slope. It's been thirty years since we graduated from law school. 

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We talked about professors we liked and didn't like, as well as fellow classmates. Some of them are powerful Republicans now. I wondered if they were all convening at a different house in a different neighborhood. Maybe they were gloating about Trump. 

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Jessica and I talked about how relatively clueless we were in law school at NYU, specifically with regard to a kind of 'elite track' for certain students who are either very good at taking law-school exams or very good at networking with the right people to line them up for prestigious legal careers. We speculated that some of this knowledge comes from families. I described a law professor I know who told me that as a child, her parents -- both professors -- used to sit around the dinner table gossiping about who was going to get a job at which university. Neither Jessica nor I grew up in what would be considered an 'intellectual environment,' which we understood put us at a bit of a disadvantage with those who did. It's almost like growing up in a family that speaks a second language; you are going to be more fluent in that language than most other speakers. 

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Being closeted in my twenties added to my overall naivete about many things in the world. 

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It was good to see people from thirty years ago and to realize how much in some ways that I've changed. (And how much in other ways that I've not changed.) 

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Standing in the park and mulling over the passage of time, I realized, is a great pleasure of being old enough to stand in the park and mull over the passage of time.