The house (and the former driveway) were 46 years old. Over those 46 years, the driveway had seen a fair amount of activity. The kids played hopscotch on it. They rode their bicycles up and down it. My son and I took shots at a basket we attached to the garage, and, over the years, countless friends, relatives, strangers, salesmen and others arrived at the front door after passing over its expanse.

If, as the saying goes, these stones could talk—well, not stones, but slabs of concrete—they would have a lot of stories to tell, and they'd also probably have a lot to complain about.

Over the years' time, tree roots and the weather had cracked the concrete, and it had buckled in various places in ugly revolt against being used so frequently.

And then in one morning it was gone. The workmen came armed with sledgehammers. They banged away, making the concrete into little pieces. The pieces were loaded aboard a truck and carried to who knows where. For a day or less the bare ground was exposed to the sunlight; then the cement truck arrived and dumped its load, and we had a new driveway.

The new driveway is as smooth as a billiard table, smooth enough so I can walk out the front door in the morning in my stocking feet to pick up the paper without fear of stumbling over the cracks that used to be there and that on occasion barked my toes and made me in the last few years wear shoes.

There are some other advantages to a new driveway. Now I can hold up my head in the neighborhood again, no longer fearful of being pointed out by the neighbors as someone who doesn't keep their place "up."

I've never been quite sure what this means. What is a place when it is "down?" Well, presumably one with a driveway that's filled with cracks at least.

For there is something about a driveway that bespeaks who you are. A clean, well-swept and smooth driveway presumably means a clean, smooth, well-organized homeowner. A driveway invites one in, especially in California where there's no snow to wreak havoc with the concrete. A good householder has a good driveway. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.

So the driveway is restored. I won't tell you what it cost to do this. All I can say is that it was a lot more than the original driveway cost 45 years ago; about, as a matter of fact, half the price we paid for the house in the first place.

I bring all this driveway history up not to brag nor to complain (well, maybe to complain a little), but to point out that the house in which I live is much like me. It is becoming increasingly in need of restoration, revival, renewal or at the least refurbishing.

To keep up this metaphor, the house's plumbing is getting tired, just as my own plumbing is getting a little rusty. I think, as a matter of fact, I have detected a leak in the shower.

Fixing that is going to cost even more than it cost to pour a new driveway, and it is probably more imperative. We could, after all, have driven over the driveway for some time to come. Leaky plumbing, on the other hand, tends to attract termites in this climate, damage floor joists and do other terrible things. So we've also got to do something soon about the shower, too. And who knows what comes after that. The roof, the gutters, the patio?

It's just that it all seems so ordinary. What one would like—just as one would like to live forever—is a house (or a body) that doesn't wear out, leak, get cracked or otherwise fail. Unfortunately, that's neither houses nor life. Life is wearing out, just as a house begins to wear out after 46 years.

We are perhaps fortunate that our house needs repair more than we do, or, to hedge the bet a little, more than we have needed so far. No major surgery, no major disorders.

As a friend says every time I meet her, "Well, I'm still here." And so are we.

But I did want you to know that the driveway has been replaced. I'm still around, you understand, but we did have to do the driveway over again. I just thought you'd like to know.