What I don't know

I am 45. I feel it in my left knee. In my eyes when I read the small print. In my back when Sadie jumps on me, with all of her 5-year-old spunk. In my brain when Rowan questions everything I say, with all of her 15-year -old rebellion. I know a of lot things. Not as much as Luther Riley, who died this morning, at 97. Luther was my mother's friend. An old man, who retired from working at the Duke University bookstore, and delivering clear and magical moonshine, in the old days, to the good folks of Durham. Luther told me, when he was 91, that he knew I went to Carolina and liked the light blue of Franklin Street. He'd forgive me. If, I could tell him about Ellicott City, Md., now. He'd visited Ellicott City when he was building warplanes in Baltimore in WWII. Your mama doesn't understand why you would live in Maryland, but I do, he said. That was Luther. He died this morning, in his little house on that little island slightly off the coast of North Carolina. I know a lot of things, now that I'm 45. What I don't know, is what I will know, when I get to that point that Luther got to this morning.