Imagine, just for a moment, that it is 2010 again. The economy, which was on the verge of a catastrophic collapse just over a year ago, has pulled out of its nosedive and is now showing some tentative signs of recovery. President Obama, the first year of his administration now in the books, is beginning to find his stride and looking forward to a new year.

From the time I was about 10 years old, I have been a rabid sports fan. In the beginning, I chose my allegiances whimsically. I liked the Cowboys because they had stars on their helmets and were called “America’s Team” and I lived in America, and because I liked Coach Tom Landry’s fedora. I chose to pull for the Lakers because they had an actual giant on their team, a man named Wilt Chamberlain who wore a cool bright yellow headband. And I picked the Dodgers because my dad liked them and I wanted to be like him or least have something in common with him.

Except for the year our daughter, Kayden, got the flu and we had to make the best of spending Christmas at home with one of our youngsters battling a fever of 102, our kids are accustomed to hitting the road pretty early on Christmas Day. Ordinarily, they have no more than a couple of hours to marvel over their presents from Santa before they have to strap in and nestle in the backseat of the car for a long winter’s nap of three hours or so, about the time in takes to get to my hometown of Sparta.

Many years from now, Americans are going to look back on the election of the 45th President Donald J. Trump with a mixture of fascination and horror. I think 2016 will be remembered as the year that the Democrats found a way to lose an election that nobody thought they could lose, and the Republicans nominated a man that nobody thought could win, a man who had only one point of intersection with the party — the celebration of centralized wealth.

The day of my stepfather’s celebration of life service was a brisk, sunny Saturday morning, as good a day as any to celebrate life. We got up before daylight, made coffee, put on our nice clothes, packed the car, and hit the road for the three-hour drive up to Sparta, where we would meet the rest of the family before all the people started showing up to hug us or shake our hands as we stood in a long line to greet them.

The list of allegations is dizzying and depressing. Every day, it seems, there are new reports of predatory behavior by someone famous, maybe someone you have admired. For me, it was Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K., both accused of horrendous acts of sexual harassment and/or assault. Both of these men — once beloved and held in the highest regard among lovers of film and television — have confessed and are now suddenly pariahs, having been fired from their various projects and awaiting whatever legal repercussions may obtain.

The first time I met my stepfather I threatened to beat him up. My brother and I were both in on it. I was looking for reasons not to like him, and as most people know, when ye seek, ye shall find.

There are very few decent photographs of me as a child. When I die, I feel sorry for the poor souls tasked with putting together the obligatory retrospective of my life told in a series of adorable old Polaroids and poignant family photos set to music, probably “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

We were pretty full of ourselves, I guess. Barely 19, barely finished with our freshman year in college, having left our provincial little town behind for the urban chaos and the infinite possibilities of university life just over a year ago. Now here we were again, back in town for the summer. We knew we were going back to school soon enough, so we wanted to cram every bit of experience and drunken camaraderie into those last few weeks together before packing up our junk, moving back into the dorm, settling on a major, and getting serious about the future after a few false starts and narrow escapes during our freshman year.

The treehouse that we had built in our backyard when we bought our house eight years ago sits vacant on a breezy September afternoon, the last day of summer, just as it has for the past eight years. For reasons I may never fully understand, the kids rejected it like a body sometimes rejects an organ, so it just sits there, year after year, collecting spiders and the intricate architecture of their silk-spun homes.