Took a drive with Cayden last Monday. A simple mission: to drop off the recycling. I forgot, of course, that all recycling centers are closed on Mondays and that, despite my persistent meandering, uptown and Old Town will all greet me with closed doors. I was playing 'The Walkmen' in the car which, by now, Cayden is very used to. Analog-recorded, gritty music. The drummer's Tom Cruise-small, but he's still the biggest sound in the band. Cayden's kicking his feet with the percussive punches, humming happily. The cracked window is tousling his hair. At the end of every song, I hear a faint 'ye-ea' from the backseat and a small clapping of hands.

I take Pershing to the freeway. Pershing remains one of my favorite roads in all of San Diego. Just past the sprawl of North Park bungalows, and riding parallel to the golf-course with all its gentrified house-fronts, Pershing is a lazy switchback poised above Florida Canyon. One switch past the Morley nursery the curvilinear Coronado Bridge comes into view. During a Santa Ana wind, which--in the fast desertification of San Diego--occurs more and more often, the Coronado Islands are visible in the distance. The mesa above Tijuana's chaos of ill-clustered buildings and ramshackle boroughs is topographically obvious: a flat-topped signal that Mexico is Mexico and San Diego with its rolling hills and blue commas of bridges are separate, with or without sentry-guarded border stations.

Cayden points out the passing cars from the backseat. I'm squinting. The sky is sun-bleached and the lack of contrast means I-can't-fucking-see. A recent visit to the opometrist had my doctor finally admit to what my mother has said for years: I've got cataracts that, come thirty-something, are gonna steal away my vision.' My doctor always claimed the spots on my lenses were congenitally deposited. That they were actually a 'rather beautiful' constellation of cholesterol spots set into place as a birthmark: my own ocular Milky Way. Well, the Milky Way is in way of my vision. Street signs are blurred and I get lost in Old Town. Were I to drive at night, the headlights and freeway reflectors would prismatically multiply. I'd be having my own laser show in the rearview mirror.

I felt old on Monday. And I'm sure my forty-something friends would've laughed and said: 'just you wait.' Still--being thirty-one and consorting with friends a few years younger--there's something to be said about the '30' benchmark. I've unmarried friends worried about being alone at 30. They drop insubstantial relationships right-quick. Or else they choose to stay in tired relationships despite their bags being packed on the front stoop, ready to leave.

In common: everyone claims they are 'too old.' Too old for this, too old for that. The quarter-life crisis has replaced the mid-life crisis. By the time we're exhausted of the twenties, maturity at 30 seems impossibly grey-haired and incalculable.

Cayden remarks the dog-walkers on the way home. 'Woof-woof' he says, pointing out the window. I squint and see what he sees. A jogger in the shadows of Morley Fields' deep-set trees, Lab running behind her. 'Woof-woof. Doooog.'

Cayden makes me happy. I'm imprisoned in sentimentalism which makes the 30 mark not so bad. Never too old for that. Despite the squint.