"Chill airs and wintry winds! My ear has grown familiar with your song; I hear it in the opening year, I listen, and it cheers me long."

Jay was turning 40.  His brown hair was still a deep chestnut with not a hint of gray.  His pale blue eyes , that if had been a teenager today he would been accused wearing colored contacts were just as bright as when he was young.   After a decade in Long Beach working at a surf shop he had come home to be closer to his family.  Bringing with him his common law wife and 3 daughters.  He was nervous about coming back.

He had talked to Abercrombie and Fitch before he came back and had his final interview to be an assistant store manger the day after he arrived.  The manager had told him he couldn't ask him how old he was but to let the staff know he was in his late 20s.  So he traded the sunlight and sand of the surf shop for the windowless, strangely lit storeroom in the old town library.  He knew his healthy tan would soon be gone.  And that by returning he would too.