There’s a sense in which I’m both drawn to and repelled by the opportunity to dwell on my childhood. On the one hand, it might perhaps help me understand where things went awry, or where I just failed to acquire certain habits and attitudes that might have made me more successful in life.
I think it’s clear, going into my eightieth year, that I consider my life to have been less than successful. If there’s anything I regard as an accomplishment, it’s marrying Victoria, and staying together for forty years — with, as far as I know, only one lapse, which I learned about just as we were about to leave on our 25th anniversary trip to Spain and the Basque country.