Old music, new music

Maybe a few of you saw, or remember hearing about, Ray Allen's clutch three-pointer in Game 6 of this year's NBA finals: the shot that helped the Heat erase a 5-point deficit with 28 seconds left, and that made their eventual series victory possible. LeBron James certainly remembered it: after the game, he was quoted as saying, "Without that, I'm boarded up in my house right now growing my beard and listening to old music."

Well, now, wait a minute. That's more or less how I spend some of my days: in fact, if you're one of the millions of web users to whom the 1980s seem old, and if you're willing to count benign negligence of a beard active growing, that's arguably how I spend most of my days. And, folks, I'm here to tell you that it ain't half bad. One can do worse than to listen to Bach, as I did today, while stroking my stubbly chin and mulling over PowerPoint images for the fall's classes.

But of course it's not that simple, either. Ray Allen did hit the shot, with a few seconds left. And Cleo came along, just over four years ago. And now each day, instead of being a retreat into the familiar, is a trek into new territory. Yesterday it was a sudden, unexpected conversation about how pork, her favorite meat, can make her sad, because she hates the idea of killing an animal. (Although it felt out of the blue, I can't say that the topic was totally unprecipitated; she and I were rubbing spices into a 2-pound pork shoulder, to make a batch of pulled pork). And today it was little laps - one-yard glides, in Cleo's parlance - in the pool, without the comfort of her water wings: a small first step towards actual unaided swimming.

The beard grows, as a matter of course. The music grows older, day by day. But Cleo grows, as well, and keeps us young in the process.