About 20 years ago, I had a really productive year when it came to writing. I either finished or started four different novels, and at the end of the period, I had four completed manuscripts.

None have yet sold, and two of them no longer exist except in my mind. I had them on 3.5-inch floppies, and at some point those floppies ceased to exist.

[caption id="attachment_1371" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Walking wounded"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/wounded-marines-iwo-jima.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1371" title="WAR &amp; CONFLICT BOOKERA:  WORLD WAR II/AID &amp; COMFORT" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/wounded-marines-iwo-jima-300x235.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="235" /></a>[/caption]

One of the stories was not particularly well-written, but it had what I thought was a really original premise. It was called "Walking Wounded," and it was based on the premise that once we have had bad experiences in our lives -- particularly in relationships -- that we carried the wounds with us for the rest of our lives. Just like the soldiers who were wounded in battle but still able to return to action, those wounds became part of us and stayed with us forever.

A good friend reminded me of that story this week. He had just been to a high-school reunion -- his 40th -- back in Virginia, and maybe without intending to, he used the occasion to evaluate the good things and the bad things that have happened to him in his life.

"I thought about your book," he told me.

I had my own 40th reunion nearly four years ago, so I understood what he meant. By the time you're pushing 60 -- from one side or the other -- you have to be really careful about your past. You've got so many more years behind you than in front of you that if you don't watch out, the past can gobble you up alive.

Go to a reunion and you see the girls you dated and the ones you wish you could have dated, the friends you made and the enemies as well. Generally by the 40th, those old rivalries don't mean what they once did. Forty years after high school, you have something in common that you never did when you were 16 or 17.

You both survived the same things -- Vietnam and Nixon, inflation and gas lines, Carter and Reagan, Watergate and Iran Contra, the Challenger explosion and the Gulf War, 911 ...

And the further you go down time's long and winding road, the more old acquaintances who slip away. I used to get notifications that my friends' parents had passed away, but now, more and more frequently, the death notices are for the classmates themselves.

You sort of have to fight it.

You have to remind yourself that you live in the present, and look forward to the future. I have a wife I dearly love, two children of whom I am completely in awe and a beautiful grandchild with another one on the way.

Walking wounded or not, it is the present that matters.

My friend has had a rough life. In fact, I'd be willing to say he has been to hell and back at least twice. But he is a good man and the best friend I ever had, and if I have to put two dollars on him, I'm betting him to win in the end.

After all, wounds do heal -- if you give them a chance.

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