seniors

February 5, 2023

Who Will You be in Twenty Years?

Once we reach adulthood, most of us believe we possess a permanent essence. We are not identical to others but unique and different, expecting to remain much as we are. 

Holding this belief, we plan for the future, assuming our happiness will depend on whether we achieve our twenty-something goals.

Ah, but goals change, at least for many. Moreover, the exact form of our transformations can’t be predicted. Here is a simple example:

As a boy, I loved vanilla ice cream, chocolate less, strawberry never.

Surprise!

In middle age, I discovered I fancied the strawberry flavor, like my father, and now, as my oldest grandson does.

My first awareness of such possible alterations began in 1971 when I listened to a radio broadcast of the Mahler Symphony #2 given the year before at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony. Leonard Bernstein (LB) conducted.

The 80-minute Resurrection Symphony (as it is called) moved me to make myself a promise. If I ever had enough money to take a trip to wherever LB performed it again, I’d do so.

Time passed. I completed school, and my professional life began. Bernstein continued his own.

After more than 15 years, I read the announcement I’d been waiting for. The New York Philharmonic would offer the music under Lenny’s baton in April 1987. I made the trip.

You could say I expected too much. Perhaps. But veteran music lovers recognize no two performances are identical, even within the same few days. The rendition was fine, but the rocket to the celestial realm failed to arrive.

Why?

The simple answer was this: Lenny and I were more than a decade older. Before the downbeat, I’d attended a few live presentations of the same work, caught many recordings of the composition, and lived a fistful of years.

That slice of my existence contained numerous shake-ups, shake-offs, amendments, revisions, complications, joys of the heart, and tweaks of all kinds. Tempests arrived and departed, fears were faced and faded, and triumphs and defeats lived in and through.

I imagine the conductor would have said something similar, though he came in an older body, one he was wearing out.

In its entire nature, the aging process can’t be anticipated. We cannot predict who we will become, no matter what we believe.

We understand mortality not at all unless a near-death experience has convincingly threatened us. Our knowledge of personal death is otherwise abstract, neither gripping nor complete.

Just so, imagining the fullness of the career I enjoyed was unknown, nor how my children and patients would transform me.

Does your crystal ball foresee what doors will open to you, what people you will encounter, the accidents ahead, or the betrayals of your body by your body? 

Who can predict the lucky breaks, world events to be written in history books, the kind and unkind people around the corner, or the impact of a thousand other things?

Neither your brain nor your physical makeup is a stationary entity. 

According to the April 1, 2021 issue of Scientific American*, “In 80 to 100 days, 30 trillion (cells) will have replenished—the equivalent of a new you.” The automated process will reinvent you to some degree regardless of your best efforts in exercise and diet.

Trust me, you will not be the same and shouldn’t be the same, given the tuition-free experience of a lifetime.

Were you to meet your older self on the street, you might perceive the resemblance but not the full character of the fellow.

I’d venture that most of us believe the wisdom of the old is the gift of self-awareness and experience rather than changes to the operation of our brain and body. If the common man is correct, how do we account for the extraordinary intensity of emotion we observe in an active child?

He did not learn this.

In our teens, we continue to possess a similar intensity, perhaps more on occasion. Still, it begins to decline so that many unwise, unthinking, non-self-reflective souls often appear sedate and thoughtful before their end.

Rather than supposing such a one grew from increasing mastery and reconsideration of his mistakes, I’d venture his body often took the lead in the mellowness and acceptance the years delivered.

In Plato’s Republic, the author recalls a conversation between Socrates and an aged friend:

Socrates: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult.

And this is a question I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the ‘threshold of old age’: Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?

Cephalus: I will tell you, Socrates, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says, and at our meetings the complaint of my acquaintances commonly is, ‘I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away; there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life.’

Some complain of the slights put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly how many evils their old age is the cause.

But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really at fault. For if old age were the cause, I too, being old, and every other old man would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known.

How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles. He was asked, ‘How does love suit with age, Sophocles? Are you still the man you were?’ He replied, ‘Peace! Most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master.

Four points should be emphasized:

  1. Socrates was about 71 at the time of his death.
  2. Years before, he could not have forecast that he would be sentenced to death for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens by encouraging in them the thoughtful questioning he practiced.
  3. A reduction in sex drive is standard in aged men, many of whom are at relative peace with it. No man in his prime would find the decline or the acceptance imaginable. Of those who maintain an active sex life in old age, few say the experience is as mindblowing as during their sexual heyday.
  4. There is much to enjoy for curious seniors who maintain adequate but imperfect health, good luck, and enough money to meet their needs without significant concern. Other advantages include a sense of calm, freedom from many worries and responsibilities, self-acceptance, and gratitude for what remains. Of course, the present is not identical to their past life. Much of their joy comes from friendship, children, and grandchildren, not heroic achievements.

Shakespeare, among others, noted we are “time’s fool,” meaning that time plays with us as ancient kings did with their court jesters (also called fools), kept nearby to entertain the monarch.

We do not know how much time we have and who we will be as we progress through whatever allotment comes our way. Nor is the breathtaking acceleration of the day’s pace conceivable until we find each 24 hours speeding ahead.

Best to fulfill your hopes early, especially if their fulfillment requires the energy, enthusiasm, and intensity a young body was made for.

Bucket lists come without guarantees. If it is unlikely that you can grasp the experience of mid-life and old age ahead of time, the list may need unexpected revision.

Those much older folks look strange, don’t they?

You see, I am time’s fool, as well.

I laugh more than ever in playing my part.

If “all the world’s a stage,” as Shakespeare said, I have been well cast.

===============

*The authors of the Scientific American article are Mark Fischetti and Jen Christiansen. 

All of the images above are sourced from Wikiart.org/ In order from the top, they are Futuristic Woman, 1911, by David Burliuk, Flight to the Future by Wojciech Siudmak, Teiresias Foretells the Future of Odysseus by Henry Fuseli, ca. 1800, and Future, 1943, by Agnes Lawrence Pelton.

January 2, 2023

What We Miss Too Easily in Life (And Where to Find It)

We often overlook opportunities because we are unaware of their value or rarity. Most of us wait for fanfare arrivals, but many invitations keep their secrets unless one notices a quiet entry. 

Think back. The ship of chance moved close and asked if you wanted a ride.

You said, “No.”

Sometimes we are too young to understand a world beyond imagining will never come our way again.

Let me tell you about one and what I learned about missed chances from Evgéniya Konstantinovna Leontóvich.

My aunt Nettie lived in the same apartment building as Eugenie Leontovich; the name had been Americanized a bit by then. She preferred to be called Madame by her students as an Artist in Residence with Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. 

I was 21.

Born in old Russia in 1900, her father and three brothers, all officers in the Imperial Army, were murdered by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution.

The then-young lady escaped to the USA, arriving in 1922. Her assent in the performing arts was swift. Soon she became a Broadway star. Subsequently, Madame appeared in T.V. and movies in subordinate roles and wrote for the stage.

I’d have known all this if Google existed 54 years ago. Nor did Nettie have any awareness of the lady’s fame, including her lead in Grand Hotel, a hit at its 1930 opening in New York. 

Two years later, when the play became a magnificent movie, Greta Garbo took over the part Evgéniya Konstantinovna Leontóvich created. 

The circumstance of my encounter with the extraordinary lady was unusual. She could find no one to accompany her to the Lyric Opera. My aunt also turned her down, suggesting I might wish to go.

We met near the box office, where I noticed a slender, short, 68-year-old woman of ordinary appearance standing alone. 

My “date!” 

We were soon seated in the center of the main floor’s second row for Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. I knew little about opera but attended Chicago Symphony performances, so we talked about music. I’d read only a few plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Eugene O’Neil, so I was ignorant of the theatre  — her domain.

The intermission passed in pleasant but unremarkable conversation. My reserved companion never mentioned her stunning past. Other than among her acting apprentices and fellow professionals, she had outlived her grandest days.

This reminds me of a poem by A.E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young. In this excerpt, the author attempts to console the deceased hero:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honors out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.   

Certainly, the Madame’s honors were mostly worn. Her renown was outrunning her, except for a diminishing number of people with long memories.   

For my part, I wish I’d been aware of all of the above and more. I’m sorry I’d not mastered the history of the Bolshevik Revolution and Tsarist Russia before WWI, the country she’d been born in.   

But more, she participated in and witnessed a lost dimension. When anyone who lived through the dictatorship of the Tsar, a world war, and civil bloodshed departed this life, their experience vanished with them. 

As David Jones wrote in his preface to In Parenthesis, his WWI memoir tried to describe the indescribable for his readers, including “the complex of sights, sounds, fears, hopes, apprehensions, smells, things exterior and interior, the landscape and paraphernalia of that singular time and of those particular men.”

He knew, and I now know, one must live some experiences lest one fool oneself about what knowing really is.

What it meant to exist in what we think of as history is erased, but for stories and yellowed accounts that fail to capture the moments’ scent, taste, sound, passion, and color.   

I saw one more opera with this gracious lady and never again.   

Today, I suppose some get a second life in selfies or triumphant moments like those of Eugenie Leontovich. Even if one survives with their celebrity intact, only those like Shakespeare obtain lasting respect.   

My missed opportunities with the grand, diminutive woman and other older generations caused me to imagine a different life. Several, actually.

  

If I could, I would go back to the period of Socrates and blend in with his students as he questioned them to make them think beyond conventional, easy answers.   

Given a set of days in ancient Rome, a menial job as a servant to Marcus Aurelius — the celebrated Roman ruler and Stoic philosopher — shouldn’t be out of reach. A little boldness might put me close enough to watch and hear him interact with others.   

Foolish or wise, you’d find me eating in the days before toothpaste, living before regular bathing, discovering love ahead of contraception, and competing in the sports of the day.   

Closer in time, I’d hope curiosity could drop me near the conversations on how best to form a new nation with the likes of Jefferson, James Monroe, and Ben Franklin.   

In a change of direction, I might join the ranks of those living and narrowly surviving the Bubonic Plague, enough to suffer the horror and desperation.

In another unreachable chance, you’d observe me as a black man on a Southern plantation, enduring the humiliation and abuse of the entitled white “masters.”   

But my experience would not all be passing through hardship and horror or learning from and about famous men. 

More desirable than all the other experiences, I’d join my father and his soldier buddies on leave in Paris and enjoy the first Bastille Day after its liberation from the Nazis. 

To see him again, this time as a young man …

I think many of us fool ourselves about life. We don’t realize all that generations past can still teach us as they play out the days remaining. 

We can’t know how a trip to a foreign land might yet change us unless we go. Our photoshopped selfies explain only our preoccupation with the impression we are trying to make in a lesser world, pitching its own images back at us.   

The mirror can only teach so much.   

There are worlds elsewhere for us to live in and many to discover from those who are almost done living them.   

I have had a wonderful life, partly because my profession required speaking with strangers who became my patients, uncovering the lives they experienced, including some who were thrown into life before my time.

The ship of chance continues to move for everyone. Whether it comes near you or you approach it, the question lingers:   

Do you want a ride?   

Say “Yes!”           

==========

The top photo is of the original production of Grand Hotel in 1930, Act I, Scene 7. The cast from left to right: Henry Hull (Baron von Gaigern), William Nunn (Meierheim), Eugenie Leontovich (Grusinskaia), Lester Alden (Witte), Rafaela Ottiano (Suzanne).

The second photo includes Eugenie Leontovich alone from the same performance.

Below it is Greta Garbo, as photographed by Clarence Bull in 1931.

Beneath that is Fritz Erler’s 1898 decoration of the book, Slavery. Like the Garbo photo, it was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Finally, my father. The drawing was created on February 28, 1945, almost certainly made by a street artist. You can see the date and a small image of the Eiffel Tower in the lower right corner. Dad sent it to his wife, my soon-to-be mother Jeanette, while he was still in Europe.

Paris had been freed on August 25, 1944, six months before. World War II ended in Europe on May 8, 1945.

My dad obtained leave to attend the first Bastille Day after the liberation of France: July 14, 1945. U.S. troops continued to occupy Europe for some time. My father returned to Chicago in early 1946.

August 14, 2022

A Therapist’s Tender Message in a Bottle

Adult children and their retired parents sometimes meet in the stories they want to hear and the ones they want to tell.

Thus, we meet in oral, video, and written histories — the questions asked and the ones answered.

My youngest created video histories of my wife and me several years ago. Last year, she gave us individual subscriptions to Storyworth. We were expected to answer in writing one question she selected for us per week, 52 weeks in all. A hardcover book would then emerge.

In approaching this task, I tried to imagine the emotional state of those who might not read it until I was gone. I’d be speaking to my children, grandchildren, and brothers then. Time uncertain, but not just ahead, so I’d like to think.

A morbid thought, you say? Well, I’ve thought of death since my 47-year-old dad had two heart attacks within 24 hours when I was 11. Just so you know, he lived past 88, but the idea of his vulnerability never disappeared.

If you want to take the reader’s role right now, I invite you for a sneak peek.

How has Your Life Turned Out Differently than You Imagined It Would?

Gerald Stein on January 24, 2022.

The question takes me back to childhood since my sense of a future was informed by how my family lived, what my relatives told me about their lives, and my own experience in and out of the home.

I was born in the mid-1940s, roughly five years after the Great Depression ended. Over a decade long, the latter period finally concluded due to government and private spending on WWII, bringing tons of jobs, both for soldiers and the manufacture of the necessary military materials.

For my parents and their siblings, as well as for the friends I made in school, the shadow of hard times didn’t disappear. Moreover, whatever relative financial improvement these adults achieved, there was a sense of insecurity about their position in life.

Since my public high school was attended almost entirely by Jewish students, there was a feeling of unease never discussed — unarticulated but present. Anti-Semitism still existed and, along with the revelation of the six million murdered European Jews, the awareness that genocide might occur again. Were economic downturns to return? No one knew, but some of these ideas still floated around in my home.

My folks told me many things about their lives when I was a boy, including portions of their pre-war personal histories. Through these stories and my own lived experience, I became aware of my mother’s teenage poverty and inadequate nutrition due to the Depression, her resulting tuberculosis, its reappearance in the mid-1950s, dad’s late1958 heart attacks, and his subsequent six-week hospitalization during which children were not permitted to visit. These made health issues real and potentially catastrophic.

Financial concerns were always present, frequently evident in the “Can we afford that?” conversations I overheard. Economy and saving money were the watchwords, avoiding unnecessary expenditures a daily consideration.

Though I was praised for my performance in school and expected by my parents to go to college and become an MD, I was also told I would have to pay for any post-high school education. That meant I had to work after school and in the summer. None of my friends worked every day after school as I did, and my summer times were, even by the time I was 15 or 16, less free of those responsibilities than theirs.

None of my parents’ siblings went to college, at least not for long. There were no models of a way forward. Their jobs were unremarkable, and their vision of a different possible future for their children was abstract. They pointed to unnamed universities but didn’t know what steps I might take to prepare myself and gain admission.

Mom and dad thought I’d win scholarships, and I did win some money as an Illinois State Scholar and in graduate school as a teaching assistant, research assistant, and a fellowship on the way to my doctorate. Still, I knew nothing about how to pursue any of this until I entered college.

Some of my friends had a bit more guidance. Steve Henikoff had two older sisters and parents who’d graduated from the University of Chicago. Rich Adelstein’s soon-to-be brother-in-law went to MIT, as Rich would soon do. Don Byrd’s parents went to U of C, as well.

I don’t blame my parents for not knowing more about how one might get from here to there in educational terms. Dad was preoccupied with making a living, while mom was overwhelmed by three active boys and a troublesome family of origin.

Concerning Steve’s home, books signaled the difference in worlds. Steve’s parents bought him a new set of the World Book Encyclopedia, updated by World Book every year. My folks had a well-worn set of encyclopedias dating to the late 1930s, over 20 years before and therefore out of date. Such comparisons, though never mentioned, told me all I needed to know about my family’s social and financial status and myself.

Steve’s dad, moreover, was at home frequently during the week, talking about buying and selling stock. It was a different world from the one I lived in, though my dad did buy shares in a couple of companies on the stock market. I can still remember the names: American Hospital Supply and Brunswick of bowling equipment fame. The former did well; the latter tanked, and dad lost money and never retook financial risks.

He talked about the ups and downs of these common stocks, preoccupied with their performance during the period he held them. That’s why I still know their names.

As a consequence of all I’ve said, plus, I’m sure, my shyness and insecurity, I also thought of a future in abstract terms. I read about becoming a doctor and pursued the steps described and a curriculum that would get me there. I also knew many attempted to walk the path to that promised land and only a small number made it all the way.

What could I hope for? I enjoyed psychology and history in college more than biology, chemistry, physics, etc. At some point, maybe third-year college, I told my folks I would become a psychologist but still knew little of what would be involved. By the way, most of my friends went away to college, though a few of us remained in Chicago. I couldn’t afford to go away and probably would have been hesitant even with a scholarship paying my room and board.

I recall a teaching assistant at U of I’s Chicago Campus with whom I became somewhat friendly. He was a psychology graduate student there, and he offered some guidance. I also talked to at least one professor about going about the process.

Still, I was hesitant. The grad student told me most of the good jobs in psychology required a Ph.D. Again, it looked like mountain climbing to me, a mountain I doubted I could surmount.

I still thought a Master’s Degree might be as much as I wanted. Fortunately, I was admitted to Northwestern University. As I became comfortable there, I took the next steps and had the support of the faculty, the institution, and many good friends. We were of mutual support to each other.

You know much of the rest. Over my life, I came to have a lovely, dear, and supportive wife, two terrific daughters of whom I am enormously proud, a magnificent son-in-law, and two budding grandsons. I became an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton, and ultimately had a private psychotherapy practice in Clinical Psychology.

I consulted for the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Blackhawks. I became an oral historian for the Chicago Symphony and published articles about classical music and sports. I won many friends and was good at keeping them, including several from my days in elementary school.

I served as an expert witness in two or three dozen civil lawsuits, including the most significant class-action case in US history up to that time. I was appointed by the district court to be one of the outside evaluators of the State of Illinois Department of Mental Health (DMH) in a lawsuit alleging civil rights violations brought by two DMH patients and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

I became an excellent public speaker and one of the founders of a high school scholarship at our old high school, philanthropy intended to benefit a diverse and economically disadvantaged student body. I did things I could not have imagined from my childhood home at 5724 N. Talman Avenue in Chicago.

As I write this, I realize that my son-in-law traveled a similar road that was arguably even harder. I had an easier life than my folks, aunts, and uncles. They survived the chaos of troubled families, the Depression, the considerable anti-Semitism of their time, and, in the case of every uncle and my dad, service during wartime.

Back to me, I met many prominent and impressive people and tangled with some scoundrels, too. My contact with others, including my patients, taught me important lessons.

I was lucky in every feature of this, tried to make the good from the bad, had help along the way, and fashioned myself into the kind of person I wanted to be, even though I am still imperfect. I have answered the question to give you more of my history since you will all be my survivors.

And yet, as much as my professional attainments meant a lot when they happened, they mean much less now. I knew I was never a great man but tried to be a good one. I made a good living and have helped my children financially with some of it. I made sure my relatives benefitted when I came into an unexpected legacy from my Aunt Florence.

One of the personal accomplishments of which I am most proud is that I got past the financial preoccupations of my parents. Living your own life, not the one you inherit, is essential. I am also happy my children are friends, and my brothers have a relationship. To the good, I have their friendship and love, as they have mine.

I also helped with the lives of my mother and my brothers, Eddie and Jack. If I were religious, Ed’s life is something I’d call a miracle. I had a hand in influencing this, but his courage and willpower were the determining factors in surviving a challenging time.

Jack’s growth and self-awareness were also unexpected but remarkable. These things have lasting value to me.

Within the past few years, it occurred to me that I was part of the luckiest generation in the history of the world. We had decent-enough parents, a safe place to live if we were white, and grew up in the world’s most influential and prosperous country — one with affordable advanced education and financial support for that education.

Those with adequate intellectual skills could advance and do better than their parents. The air was clean, and none of my friends fought in wartime. Nearly everything was possible for us.

So what else matters now? To show love to all of you and be as kind as I can in the way I live. To live in the hope of a better world for you than sometimes seems probable. Finally, to do my part in making it so.

I don’t expect to be remembered except by all of you. Of course, some patients and my dearest friends will think of me from time to time, and others might come across my name here and there for a while, but I never shot for that. I imagine you will tell stories about me, at least occasionally. Some will be funny, especially those about whatever you find amusing or peculiar in me.

Think of me laughing with you.

Much is out of my control, as it is for the rest of humanity. Thus, I hope to grow in acceptance of whatever is to come. We are all participants in a giant relay race. That is enough.

Your love means the world to me. You have all mine.

====================

The top photo is a Painted and Sealed Message in a Bottle with Messages of Multiple Authors painted by Peer Kyle, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The painting below it is Helgoland in Moonlight by Christian Morgenstern, 1851, sourced from History Daily. An Untitled 1959 painting by Mark Rothko comes from the Stanley Museum, U of Iowa. It is followed by Arizona Sunset on a Train Trestle, late July 2020, the work of Laura Hedien with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website. This gallery finishes with another Rothko from the Stanley Museum, U of Iowa: Untitled, 1968.

July 28, 2022

On the Ageless Beauty of Women

I have long had the unusual gift of seeing through age — recreating the youthful splendor of the women I know.

We’ve all observed someone who looks vaguely familiar but unidentifiable. We either figure out their identity, or we don’t.

But something odd happens if it is a woman I spot but can’t name, especially someone out of my past. If I observe her long enough, my mind’s eye plays a trick. The decades drop away, and she becomes the young person she was. Her name returns along with her youthful bloom.

My male friends also remain young to me. It is not a failure to notice a receding hairline or changed hair color. Instead, their quality of personhood remains. Seeing them again recreates their essence, their encompassing and lasting nature.

I am not alone in this magic trick. Robert Heinlein, the great science fiction writer, described it before me.

He also understood it better than I, including that some of us experience it more readily in women. Heinlein used the artistry of the sculptor, Auguste Rodin as an example:

As I reflect on Heinlein and Rodin — both great artists as I am not — I will risk a few more words.

I see the grace, the spirit, the kindness, and the sparkle in such ladies. The special ones create an aura of enchantment, and I am taken in.

I am not simply a flatterer if I tell them they are beautiful. They remain lovely to me.

That is all that counts.

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The top image is Gaze – 3, an oil painting by Rajeskharen Parameswaran. It was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

September 8, 2021

On Adult Attachment to Children

There is nothing like the wordless sadness of a beautiful face dear to you. I’m referring to the small, huggable, wide-eyed ones when overtaken by uncertain illness.

“Mine!” is one of his favorite words, claiming property his bigger brother shows an interest in. The malady, however, offered nothing he wanted to keep.

The upbeat mood of the smiling, sweet-as-chocolate cherub melts in a few minutes. Energy departs, spirit evaporates, words transmute into inexpressable discomfort. The flush of heat rises, but the body descends.

The sick two-year-old loses his chatter.

My youngest grandson does not reach for a hand — doesn’t lead you to a toy, or a place, or try to have you for himself instead of sharing you with his six-year-old brother.

It must be tough to be a little fellow, hard to make your imperfect utterances understood.

Now he wants the hugs only a mom and dad can supply — seeks their comfort and embrace, the safety he can’t describe.

You watch this happen. COVID fertilizes your fear, growing like Jack’s speedy beanstalk. The concern is new, though other epochs had their own dangers — smallpox, polio, plague …

The moppet slumps into slumber. You depart, but the precious person grips your heart, now shadowed by a cloud.

The day passes. Your wife’s sleep is fitful.

The golden boy holds the sorrowful power to instill worry.

Daughter #2, his mother, sends a message early the next day.

A long nap, his parents’ knowing, double-duty attention, food, and more sleep sweep the danger away. The tentative all-clear sounds.

The news makes the sun shine brighter today. The superpowers of small children extend to the stars.

Sir Francis Bacon wrote, “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.”

What the writer didn’t say might have also been spoken about love. We are held fast by our loves, the closest friends, our offspring, and our grandkids, too.

Those attachments can do far worse to us than the bit of concern we had that day. Much, much worse. Many near misses and joys await. Best not to borrow trouble.

But this two-year-old deserves credit. His bounce-back brought the sky’s warmest blue. Only the dearest hearts inside you do this. He sprinkles fairy dust and doesn’t even know it.

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The first photo dates from 1934 and was published in Modern Screen magazine in 1950. The two-year-old girl is Elizabeth Taylor, with her mother Sara Sothern and brother Howard.

The second image was taken by Rita Martin and shows an unnamed child in 1912. Both of the photographs were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

March 19, 2020

Coping with “Skin Hunger” in the Coronavirus Age: Entry from an Unwritten Journal

I’ve never written in a journal, despite offering the idea to many patients. Today I write because writing permits expression in the absence of nearness. At this moment, we mustn’t be close to others no matter what we want.

Yet we are the same creatures evolved to be social, to touch and more than touch: to shake hands, hug, embrace, caress, kiss, fondle, and lose ourselves in love and friendship.

We suffer from a pandemic side-effect called Skin Hunger by some, a too familiar, but unspoken condition among us, soon to be known by almost everyone. We have become experimental subjects in an unplanned scientific inquiry.

Still, today offered some small compensation. Here is a morning snapshot without mourning.

I wanted fresh orange juice. I’m lucky in many ways, including a meer 10-minute drive to a store that almost gives it away and a car to get there.

To minimize risk, I arrived early. Really early for those of you who aren’t seniors: at the high-risk age of our world’s coronavirus stage.

I entered at nine-minutes before dawn, a trip on night’s black edge: 6:20 AM.

Few people beat me in. The magic of automatic doors saved me from contact. Then a young woman employee walked by.

“Excuse me. Where are hamburger buns?“

“If we have them, they’re in aisle four.“

I guess “if we have them” has turned into a reflexive response. Shortages because of the terror. I went to get the juice, whose location I knew, then to aisle four. Tons of buns.

One of the automated checkouts was in use, three empty. I completed the errand while maintaining social distance. Mission accomplished! We take our triumphs where we can find them within the constraints of our present moment.

Breakfast. I had a drink of water, then prepared my typical fiber-filled repast: shredded wheat manufactured without sugar, salt, and taste. With bananas today, though I often add blueberries if the price is reasonable.

Then coffee to feel alive. Most seniors require gallons, plus medications. I don’t take many of the latter, but the standard is relative. Friends report back problems and hernias from lifting all the pharmaceuticals they use!

Now for the major event of the day. Ta-da! Walking outside. Almost three miles.

People are friendlier but maintain distance. Almost everyone now waves or says hello, even from across the street.

An outlier on a bike, a woman, widened the footage between us from 15 to 25 feet.

Some folks walked dogs. Physical contact with a loving mammal. Think about it.

I passed modest homes and a few places an old friend compared to the Palace of Versailles. He was exaggerating, of course.

I got to thinking about how COVID-19 might alter our values. We take much for granted: life, health, work, restaurants, etc.

Perhaps, for a while, the condition of our being will be differently admired, differently evaluated, differently appreciated.

The status of simple things is getting a boost, decency among them.

The birds were out and a concert in progress. A legendary symphony conductor, Carlo Maria Giulini, told me he thought this the most beautiful music of all. No disagreement from me. Even the woodpecker with his built-in jackhammer joined the sing-along.

Some folks I know are stunned at the avalanche of bad news. The ones in feathered flight don’t care. Birds chirp, chatter, and sing in their first show of the day. We hear mostly males at that time, hoping to win a female heart and trying to mark their territory.

The scale of their satisfaction is smaller than ours.

Perhaps they offer something worth learning.