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Aiden looked up at Ian “You want to see my toys?”

“Yeah, cool!” Ian said

He went off with the children and sat down on the floor Paul watched him from across the room as he played with Aiden’s toy trucks Soon there were four other children on the floor with thehed

“Ian! Ian!” Aiden called out to him as he threw a plastic airplane into the air The kids loved hireat with them

Before his intellect had a chance to reflect on it, Paul was filled with a powerful longing He wanted Ian to be the ht up with his eical i sense of loss

That Ian would not have children—that the genetic code for his beauty would die with him—seemed like another of God’s cruel jokes It occurred to Paul that beauty calls out to our creative instincts In a desperate fight against life’s inevitable decay, beauty de for children with their beloved The beautiful inspire artists to write poetry, to co sy theatrical perforinal alive

Within each encounter with beauty is the inevitability of loss The beautiful bouquet of flowers turns brown in a day, the beautiful lover grows old and dies, even the sublime landscape of a mountain is constantly eroded It will one day return to the flat earth and be nothing

Paul thought about all of the new years that began with such hope and promise, the beauty of infinite possibility, that were now distant, set in stone, ancient history Each year’s end was a beginning and each beginning was an end

“That’s a nice necklace,” Julie said

Paul’s focus caold cross and held it away from this chest to look at it

“Oh yeah,” he said “It was a Christift”

“I know,” Julie said “I ith Ian when he bought it Do you like it?”

“Yeah”

“That’s good It seeift”

“Why?”