A friend of mine, when talking about how far back we go, often says that we are childhood friends. I always thought this was not true, since we only met for the first time in college. But as I grow older, it seems she is right.

When I was 30, I wouldn't have described my twenties as a childhood. I was a man grown dammit. I was no longer in school. I was shaving and wearing pants and meeting girls and traveling by myself and making decisions about my future and having strong opinions and getting a job and quitting it to write a book and getting written about in newspapers and writing in newspapers and...

As I cross the age of 40, college begins to seem more and more like childhood. I suppose, at some point, my present age of 42 will also start seeming like a childhood of sorts.

We don't define childhood, and maybe that's a good thing. But if we had to, I think most of us would agree that it is a time during which we become what we are going to remain for the rest of our lives. But that definition isn't very useful because we are always becoming what we will remain for the rest of our lives. In fact, we are in the process of becoming right till the moment of death. Only in death can we ever truly become something that doesn't change. Dead is the last thing we become.

Perhaps, in death, all of life becomes childhood.