Life hits the gas pedal

Life comes at you pretty fast sometimes.

I don’t believe for a minute the notion that everything slows down as you age into your senior years.

Which is fine by me. I'd rather have exciting than dull, adventure than commonplace, an unexpected future than repetition of the past.

A new grandson, my daughter's first wedding anniversary, the death of a friend and other events have collided in the last couple of weeks to prove that life doesn’t stand still.

Speaking of a grandson ...

He is Bradley Joseph, born to my stepdaughter Kelsey and her husband Jeremy. This kid is long, long as in string-bean long, and you get the sense of a baby who will become a boy who will become a man who is tall and lanky.

Bradley’s older sister Rylin is a few months short of 2, and she suddenly went from being the baby to being the older sister, more engaged, more talking, more animated. It was like the birth of Bradley switched on something in Rylin that made her almost instantly more grown.

And all that makes the grandparents more engaged, especially in these early weeks as we try to lend a helping hand, not only with Bradley but with Rylin as well. Jane and I will be taking Rylin to water babies swimming lessons starting next Saturday a deja vu moment all over again, reminiscent of my water baby classes with my daughter Elizabeth and son David at the YMCA pool in Beverly, Mass.

Speaking of my water baby ...

Elizabeth and her husband John celebrated their first wedding anniversary by making a trip north from their home in Connecticut to the Colony Hotel in Kennebunkport, Maine, site of one of the best days of my life.

And speaking of life ...

We can't go through life without its companion death.

As I often do at a time of someone's passing, I think to the advice of Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives," he said. "But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived."

My friend and Seacoast Media Group colleague Tom Davis passed away on Wednesday. I didn't know he was sick, had even exchanged emails with him that morning on the sale of the group.

We spent many years at work together before our retirements - he has finance director, me as director of operations. He was the money guy who understood more than anybody how the money was earned and how it was spent, which he would sometimes calculate on a big electric adding machine on his desk, fingers a blur as he could touchtype on a key pad the way I could touchtype on a keyboard.

These new chapters in the book of life don't end, really, they seem to unfold into deeper levels of characterization and subplots, one that require us to keep living, keep reading ahead.