Most of my life I've loved good poetry, figure skating, essays, and concertos (or concerti if I were a true speaker of Italian). I'm gay! Surprise!

I've never been a fan, though, of stream of consciousness. I love structure, tight editing, words chosen carefully. I could listen to Mozart concertos forever: music that sounds effortless but for which tones and themes and every note were considered and tested by a genius who devoted his entire life to his craft. The most memorable figure skating performances I've watched are like Mozart concertos: athletes gliding across the ice as if they were walking on clouds rather than putting years of hard work, and those of their coaches and friends and family who support them, on the line for a short or long program in which their entire careers are defined in mere minutes.

This week I had an essay published in which I expressed just about everything I've ever hoped to about life up to this stage as a middle-aged man who is learning to embrace his autumn. It appeared in a weekly newspaper read by more than 100,000 people, in a column produced by one of the finest editors I have ever known. The column features many writers who are pillars of their communities. I'm ... well, pretty much just a regular guy!

Thanks to her, three of my essays had been published before the edition came out this week, but this essay was the one I poured most of my heart into. I wanted to write a decent tribute to my mother, my sister, my daughter, my husband, to parents, to children, to gay men of my generation who had to take great risks to try to find love, to anyone seeking life's rewards but who treads with caution: a tall order that had a word limit of 325!

A successful concerto flows easily when other members of the orchestra bring out the best in a soloist. The editor of this publication, whom I did not know when I first submitted essays to her, brings out the best in me as a writer and as a person. So does my husband. Were it not for my daughter, my greatest inspiration, I probably would have never written the essays nor dozens of poems I've composed after my daughter was born.

I wasn't absolutely sure the piece was going to be published until my husband took a screen shot of it after the newspaper came out and he found a copy at work. I cried tears of joy when he texted me. I felt like I had skated a clean program without falling or performed in a concert with my head held high the entire time.

I don't know if I will ever have this feeling again, but I'm so grateful to believe that after all these years I've become a better writer.

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