Yet now, at the end of the trip, I felt a dull melancholy. The way DayQuil can mask a cold, but leave you with a muffled head. I was excited, sure, but I was tired. I wondered if old age felt like this. If the end is not a triumph and fireworks, but a simple, quiet arrival. A beer in a pub and wondering what it was you had wanted so desperately. Looking back at a complex grab bag of lessons, but seeing no through line. Feeling pride of accomplishment, as I did now, but struck by your own cheating and laziness. And finally you take a cosmic bus to see your mother.
