Daddy Going Backwards

We spent a few minutes with the backyard swing yesterday, me moving around the boy in the swing. He spends only a few minutes in there now before requesting "Down! Down!" Yesterday he commented on me walking around him with "Daddy going backwards." And it just seemed like a very astute summation of my life in general in relation to being a new father. In his newly forming ability with language it may have been simply that I was walking backwards to push him from a better vantage point. He likes to walk backwards out of the room sometimes, and we'll say "Bye-bye" as he leaves the room. But in my being an older dad, 46 when he was born and now 48, I do feel like I am traveling backwards away from some peak of physical and mental ability. If the first half of life is moving forward and involves constant growth and change towards being more complete, then perhaps the 2nd half involves the slow disassembly of that accumulation, the slow falling apart of the self. Daddy going backwards.