Going with the Flow

As the old joke goes, we’re three thousand miles from the ocean, in California instead of New York. We were scheduled to fly from Burbank to JFK yesterday at noon. Before leaving our hotel, we checked the airline’s website, which reported that our flight would leave on schedule. By the time we arrived at the airport, however, our flight was listed as “delayed,” and by the time we reached the check-in counter, the flight had been cancelled. The first available flight is the red-eye on Sunday night, arriving in New York early Monday morning. The airline’s problem was not the snow in New York but the dispersion of the aircrews. The storm had put them in places from which they couldn’t reach Los Angeles in time.

We couldn’t return to our hotel, which was fully booked for the New Year’s festivities, and we were unable to rent another car from the agency to which we had returned our rental less than an hour before. Our son came to the rescue. He picked us up, loaded our heavy suitcases into his car, and took us to his home, where we will stay until Sunday night. In addition, we can use our daughter-in-law's car. She's in Israel right now attending her youngest sister, who gave birth to a daughter a few days ago.

This morning, I had to struggle to put our suitcases into our car’s trunk, and only with the help of my wife did I succeed. When we returned the car, I was unable to extract the suitcases, one of which we had jammed against the trunk’s lock. An attendant had to help me. And the driver of the shuttle van had to lift the suitcases into the bus and, when we had arrived at the airport, lift them down and place them on a luggage cart. My injured foot made it harder for me to lift the cases – I tried, without too much success, not to put pressure on it – but the main problem was my lack of upper body strength. Oh to be seventy again! But just as I could do nothing about the cancellation of the flight, I can’t do much about the decline in my strength. I try to retard the decline with strength training exercises, but I have to wait for my damaged foot to heal before I can resume them again.

I’m surprised my equanimity in all this, going with the flow rather than raging against the circumstances. But what good would it do me to fume? The Goddess Fortuna has been good to me up to now and raging against her might put me in her bad graces. Besides, she's really done us a favor. She's given us extra days with our descendants, and we won't be forced to climb over snowdrifts once we arrive in New York. By then, there should be a path through the pile of snow at the curb. It’s an ill wind, as they say.

Sports Car

In the past, whenever we visited our children in Los Angeles, I'd fantasize about the kind of car I'd buy if we lived there all year round. I'd alternate between a sturdy, sensible, dignified car, one suitable for a retired gent, and a sports car. I'd remember with nostalgic fondness a Jaguar convertible two-seater, circa 1950, black, sleek, with feminine lines. It belonged to a friend of mine, who gave me a couple of rides in it, each time a thrill, not because of the car's speed - my friend drove within the speed limits - but because of the machine's beauty.

I no longer drive, so these fantasies are moot, but as a young person and well into middle age, I would look at such vehicles with wistful longing, imagining my inner sportsman and explorer driving one along a winding mountain road, the wind in my hair, an ascot at my throat, and elegant leather driving gloves on my hands. Girls would swoon at my approach and I'd pretend I didn't understand why.

But over the past few years I've noticed a profound change in my attitude towards these cars. I now look at them with an indulgent smile, taking pleasure in their appearance but with no envy of their owners or any appetite for owning one myself, even if could drive again. For one thing, I can't imagine entering or exiting such a low vehicle gracefully at this age of my development.

My judgment was vindicated recently during our stay in Los Angeles. While seated in our rental car in a Ralph's supermarket parking lot, waiting for my wife to emerge with the Times and some organic apples, I saw an old guy unlocking the door of the light gray Porsche convertible parked next to our Dodge. The car's top was up, but this was not the case for the old man's back, bent with osteoporosis. Painfully, he inserted his right foot into the car, slowly lowered himself into its bucket seat, and then with both hands pulled his left leg into the car to join the rest of him. He probably felt relieved when he could close the door.

Years ago, a New Yorker cartoon showed a middle-aged guy in a car salesroom examining a sports car. "Are you sure," he asked the salesman, "this doesn't have mid-life crisis written all over it?" If the geezer with the Porsche ever had a mid-life crisis, he recovered well before he bought this car, for the car was relatively new and he was distinctly old. But mid-life is not the only time for age-related crises. One faces them in old age too. Perhaps the purchase of his impractical car helped this old man compensate for his feelings of diminished physical ability. True, he found it hard to get behind the wheel, but once he was there, he was, as my wife said after I had told her what I had seen, as powerful as anyone. Or perhaps he faced no crisis at all. Perhaps he was finally fulfilling the fantasy of his youth and why not? If not now, when?

Dilemma

My friend Max Harris recently presented a moral dilemma on his blog www.isitreallylikethat.blogspot.com which, in its essence, asks you to decide how to distribute an antidote for an airborne fatal plague that will soon spread throughout the world. Only enough of the antidote has been stockpiled to save ten per cent of the world's population. Without an antidote, ninety-nine per cent of the world's population will be wiped out. To prevent civil disturbance, everyone will receive a pill, but ninety per cent of the pills will be placebos. No one but you will know who receives which pill. The problem assumes that you won't give it to your family and friends and sell the rest, so that, in the words of the folksong, "the rich would live and the poor would die."

It's up to you to decide.

When asked to solve this problem, my initial reaction was "who am I to judge?" But who for that matter would be any better at it? Can you think of a committee of wise men and women to whom you would entrust responsibility for distributing the pills? Actually, what about the U. S. Senate? It we left it to them, the wrangling would consume so much time that the plague would arrive before anyone could get a pill.

But perhaps that wouldn't be such a bad thing. The human race would survive, along with some of the world's best and brightest, as well as some of the world's rogues and dullards. I'd want the whole range of abilities and characters, just as before. If one were choosing an orchestra, one would not select only woodwinds, for example, or strings. So with the world. A random culling of the population would leave us much as we are today. We'd have the same proportion of policemen and physicians, athletes and artists. The world's libraries and museums would still be intact, and life could continue, but this time without worrying about pollution or overpopulation or the scarcity of oil.

Is anyone more worthy to live than another? Have we learned nothing from the Final Solution? Besides, human engineering can lead to catastrophic consequences, as implied in George Bernard Shaw's famous response to the actress who suggested that they produce a child together, so that their offspring would have her face and his brains. "But what if, Madam, he had my face and your brains?" So I say throw the antidote into the sea and let chance play itself out, but with one exception. As I said to Max, let's save a pill for Santa Claus so that he can return next year.

Books

About a month ago, the Times published a long article about a woman who has spent the past 30 years or so developing her garden. But now that she's reached her early seventies, she's decided to simplify her gardening tasks. She's replacing annuals with perennials and substituting plants that require little maintenance for plants, such as roses, that demand more attention. Her husband, however, finds it hard to throw anything away. Without telling her, he sometimes takes the discarded plants and repositions them in another part of the garden. "Husbands are all very well," she said, "but a husband in the garden is a mixed blessing."

This couple represents my warring impulses with respect not to plants but to books. On the one hand, I remember with pleasure those sabbaticals at UCLA when we lived in furnished apartments. These were well furnished, with ample linens, tableware, cooking implements, and the like, and we needed to buy nothing to begin housekeeping. I liked the austere, uncluttered atmosphere of those apartments, which contained no books other than those we had brought with us. But each time we spent any time in Los Angeles, we'd accumulate a dozen or so books, few of them really necessary, yet at the end of our stay we'd ship them all home.

While I like living among minimal possessions, including books, once the books are in my home, I find it hard to give them away. The few hundred that we've accumulated during the past ten years while living in this apartment - most of that time on a part-time basis - will be swamped by the fifteen hundred to two thousand books we shipped from Jerusalem and are now sitting in a Bronx warehouse. We're now adding bookshelves to accommodate them. When we finally arrange them on our shelves, they'll provide, at least for me, an illusion of solidity and security, a kind of anchoring, the literary equivalent of a security blanket. They'll be a reassuring presence.

It's nonsense, I know. We don't need them. We live one block from the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and we can glean a wealth of information just from the internet. I'm not going to reread or even refer to most of the books from Jerusalem. Still, how can I throw them out or give them away? Each one is a friend, a witness to part of my history. I'd feel as if I were abandoning them, which of course is absurd.

Still, we should be simplifying our life, just as that gardener is trying to do, not complicating it, as will be the case when the books finally arrive at our door. By that time we will have lived without them for almost three years. Maybe by then we won't mind going through them and drastically thinning them out. But since books tend to expand to fill the available space, and since past behavior is the best single predictor of future behavior, it's not likely that we'll get very far. But if we fail to thin them out, we can at least prevent their further expansion. To this end, I plan to distribute condoms among the bookshelves.

Forgetfulness

Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States (2001-3), best-selling author, and the recipient of numerous prizes, is one of the few serious American poets whose work is accessible to the general reader. Even so, I hadn't heard of him until I stumbled upon one of his poems. I found it on the back page of an article that a New York friend had cut out from The Atlantic and mailed to us in Jerusalem. The poem is "Forgetfulness." You can find the poem in Collins's Questions about Angels (1991) and in his Sailing Alone Around the Room (2001).

In the poem's first stanza, Collins suggests that our forgetting follows a pattern. After reading a novel, you first forget the author's name, and then, in the following sequence, the title, the plot, the conclusion, until finally the book becomes one you never heard of. He's right about that. On a trip abroad, I once bought a paperback edition of a Trollope novel, read it with pleasure, and, when I returned home and put it on the shelf, I discovered that the novel was already there. Since I'm the only Trollope aficionado in the family, it was clear I had read the novel once before but had utterly forgotten it.

It's as if, Collins continues, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain / to a little fishing village where there are no phones. He's not writing about the "tip of the tongue phenomenon," when the word or name you're searching for is tantalizingly within reach. Often you know the number of the word's syllables, even some of its sounds, but you can't quite find it. Only later, after an interval ranging from a few minutes to a few hours, when you're thinking about something else, it comes to you unbidden. Collins isn't writing about that. No, he's writing about those memories - the name of a state capital, perhaps, your second cousin's married name, a poem that you once memorized - that have gone forever.

About five years ago at a bookstore, I placed an order for a book. The clerk told me that he would call me when it arrived and then asked for my phone number. He might as well have asked me what his phone number was. I had no idea, although of course I knew that I should know. Although this incident shocked me, it didn't make me wonder if it was the first sign of dementia. Nothing like that happened again until a few weeks ago, after a pleasant lunch with my niece and her significant other. When I called a car service to take my wife and me home, I gave the dispatcher the number of our street but then I couldn't remember the name of our street. I had to ask my wife where we live.

This was no worse, I suppose, then forgetting my telephone number, but unlike the incident in the bookstore, this time I felt not only shock but panic. Five years ago I didn't know that almost half of all those 85 and over suffer some degree of dementia, and of course five years ago I was not almost 80. So although I eventually recovered both my telephone number and my address, I now worry. Will the day come when I can't retrieve them or, once I recall them, can't remember them? Well, I tell myself, if I'm on the train to dementia, I haven't reached the station yet, and in the meantime, I'll do my best to enjoy the ride.

Clay

Saturday night, while gazing vacantly at my hand, I noticed with a start that my wedding ring was gone. I could not have been more dismayed had the finger disappeared along with it. A simple white gold band, with our initials and the date of our marriage engraved inside, it's graced my hand for almost 47 years. This is not the first time it's been absent though. Each time I go to the hospital I give it to my wife for safekeeping. But it's also gone AWOL.

The first time it came off my finger involuntarily was when I mailed a letter on Keren Kayemet Street in Jerusalem. Long before, to prevent terrorists from depositing time bombs in letterboxes, the postal service cemented the openings, leaving only a thin horizontal slit for mail. With my left hand I dropped a letter into the box and as I withdrew my hand I saw with horror that the ring stood in the opening. upright and alone. As carefully as I imagined a brain surgeon would operate, I slowly inserted my fourth finger into the ring and brought it out of the box, all the while imagining how I would tell a postal clerk, in my poor Hebrew, that my ring was in a postal box on Keren Kayemet Street.

The second time it unintentionally came off was during a training exercise held by my Israeli army reserve unit. I don't recall the exercise, but I think it required me throw something. Whatever it was, my ring followed it, falling somewhere into the sand about ten yards away. I despaired of finding it, but somehow, scratching about on my hands and knees, I did.

The third time was on a flight from New York to Tel Aviv, when I noticed that my ring was missing. I rooted around my seat looking for it but with no success. Once back in Israel, I phoned El Al and reported the ring missing. A few days later, the man in charge of the airline's Lost and Found Department called me to say that he had found it. He had personally searched through more than twenty plastic bags of the trash collected during the cleaning of our plane. He refused a reward, but he did recommend a charity to which I made a contribution in his honor. After that, I had a jeweler insert a guard to narrow the size of the ring.

This is the first time I've lost my ring in America, in San Diego, as a matter in fact. We're here to attend a wedding. Our hotel's plumber, who opened the trap under our sink here at my request, found nothing. I'll check the other suspects, but something tells me that this time I'm not going to find my ring. Then what will I do? Perhaps I could ask my brother to let me have my father's wedding ring. I'm sure my brother, a generous man, would do so without hesitation, although it would probably cost him a pang to part with an item associated with a father he so adored. My wife suggested that I might wear a band she inherited - she thinks it might have belonged to one of her great grandfathers. She also suggested that we might buy a new ring, as much as possible like the old one, with the same inscription. The new ring would be smaller, though, and sit more securely on my finger.

I will consider all these possibilities, but as good as I am at selling myself a bill of goods, I could not pretend that any successor was the real thing, the ring with which my wife married me and that I had worn for almost 47 years. But perhaps it's just as well that my ring finger remains unadorned. Its nakedness will remind me of the vanity of human wishes and that nothing lasts forever, nothing, that is, with the exception of love. As long as I'm alive, with or without a ring, I'm indissolubly bound to my wife, and after I die it will live on in our descendants. To quote Ira Gershwin, The Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, they're only made of clay, but our love is here to stay.

Bugs in the Soup

When my wife and I returned to New York after a year in Ethiopia, my employer, the Ford Foundation, treated us to a full-day's physical examination. We reported to a luxurious midtown facility, donned its white robes and slippers, and spent the day visiting various testing stations. At one of them, for example, a technician tested my vision. At another, a physician examined my prostate. When my hearing was about to be tested, my wife walked by and told the audiologist, "be sure to test his hearing carefully." The audiologist smiled and said, "that's what all the wives say."

In fact the audiologist did find a slight hearing loss in the upper registers - registers, I joked to my wife, into which her voice fell - but the deficit was too small to require intervention. I was then forty. Perhaps five years later, my wife and I attended a reception at which her mother and both grandmothers were present. Both old ladies were hard of hearing, yet neither wore hearing aids. While they were engaged in an animated conversation with each other, my wife's mother turned to us and said, "neither one of them can a word the other is saying."

I joined my wife in laughing at this remark, it never occurring to me that some day I might join my wife's grandmothers in deafness. It's not that I thought that I'd be forever young, it's just that I never thought of aging at all, at least not as applied to me. Other people were old.

But little by little, I found myself turning up the volume on the radio and asking people to repeat themselves. A few years ago, I finally acquired hearing aids, which restored about 80% of my hearing. I could hear songbirds again. But this year it seemed to me that I wasn't hearing so well, although at my annual hearing exam the other day, the audiologist told me that my hearing hadn't changed. When I told him that I felt my hearing had declined, he turned up the volume of my hearing aids. In addition, he showed me that I had not been inserting the devices far enough into my ears. (I had perhaps been reacting subconsciously to my mother's admonition, which she in turn had been told by her mother, never to put anything in your ear smaller than your elbow.) "You won't hurt yourself," the audiologist assured me, "if you push it all the way in." Now I hear sounds I had forgotten existed, like the hollow plunking of computer keys when I type. Now I realize how muffled the world was, like a city under two feet of freshly fallen snow. Today, in contrast, I seem to hear every little squeak, squeal, creak, crackle, and crunch, although I still can't distinguish among certain initial consonant sounds.

The revelation that the sounds I was hearing anew had gradually been falling away made me wonder what other abilities have atrophied so slowly that I haven't notice their lessening. Perhaps it's just as well I don't know, since it's unlikely that devices or procedures exist that can restore most of the diluted abilities. True, new hips and knees can be implanted and cataracts can be removed, but, along with hearing aids, these are exceptions. Some deficits, such as the decline in muscle mass and strength, are too obvious to miss. As for the rest, I'll take my cue from the cook who said, as she pulled a bug out of the soup, "what the eye don't see, the heart don't grieve about." So I don't worry about those declines that I haven't noticed. Instead, I'm thrilled by my improved hearing, my wife is happy that she doesn't have to tell me everything twice, and my neighbors will be pleased that my hi fi is now turned to a normal volume.

"Feeling the Love"

In response to the controversy over enhanced airport security measures, The New Yorker magazine's cover for December 6 shows a curvaceous, pony-tailed, female Transportation Security Administration agent frisking a male passenger who's about her age. He's wearing a tan suit, a striped shirt with a red tie, and horn rimmed glasses. He's passed through a metal-detecting electronic gate, and he's deposited items such as his shoes, cell phone, keys, and coins, into one of those gray plastic tubs - we see his shoes in one of them. He should also have been asked to deposit his hat, which still sits on his head.

He's standing with his legs spread far apart, and he's holding up his arms parallel to the floor and at right angles to his body. The agent is leaning over him as he bends backwards. With one hand, she's feeling his chest and with the other she's feeling his lower left arm, each hand flat against him, and she's kissing him. Another TSA agent, a male (who should have been the one to frisk him), looks on with a smile.

Mentioning the cover at dinner, I told my wife that it represented wishful thinking on the young man's part. "What are you talking about?" she said indignantly. "She's fending him off!" Incredulous, I protested. "It's perfectly clear that she's succumbed to passion. She's molesting him." My wife was adamant. "Don't you see?" she said, "She's pushing him back!" I turned to the magazine's table of contents to find the cover's title, hoping that it would justify my position. But the title, "Feeling the Love," was no help. "If she's fending him off," said I, still pursuing my point, "why is she kissing him? Why hasn't she pulled her face away?" But it was clear I was beating my gums in vain.

Our interchange made me think of the different ways in which we must be viewing the world, she from her perspective, I from mine. I always knew some differences in perception must exist. After all, our educations and backgrounds are similar, but the differences in our ages (six years), heights (seven inches), and genders, if nothing else, would create different experiences and expectations. Long ago I learned that if there are two ways of doing something, hers and mine, my way is not necessarily better. Long ago she learned that my assertions, even when delivered in my most definite, professorial, and authoritative tone, are not necessarily true.

Even so, our tastes, political positions, and values are very similar. So I was startled that we could disagree about what seemed to each of us so obvious. Are there other radical differences in perception that we haven't uncovered? Our disagreement provides a useful reminder that each of us is an individual; neither is a clone nor an appendage of the other. And it's just as well. I would find marriage to someone just like me intolerable. As it is, our compulsions nicely complement one another's, neither reinforcing nor conflicting with them, so our relations with one another are harmonious. Whether the agent is kissing the young man or he's kissing her, someone is "feeling the love." In the case of my wife and me, the love is felt by us both.

The Glory of the Everyday

Years ago, we hosted for Shabbat dinner an American couple who were visiting Jerusalem. In those days, guests would usually join us a our table on Friday evening, and sometimes these would include strangers. Perhaps a mutual friend had given them our name and telephone number. Perhaps we had acceded to the request, by one of the associations to which we belonged, to host visitors. I don't remember how this couple came to us, but we had not met them before, and we never saw them again.

This was not, however, the end of our relationship. The husband sends us a card each year for Chanukah, on which he inscribes, in careful lettering, one or more quotations. In addition, he sometimes sends excerpts from books he's reading. I respond to these in a letter of thanks, and over the years a correspondence arose between us. Eventually, we became epistolary friends.

This year his Chanukah card contains three quotations, one of which, from Garth Stein, is striking: To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live my life. This is a powerful idea and one more useful than the admonition to live each day as if it were out last. As the poet Billy Collins has pointed out, if we were to treat each day as our last, we would not bother to repair the roof, and our friends and relations would soon tire of our farewells. But if we viewed each day as stolen from death, we could hope to steal a few more and in the meantime we would savor each moment. The everyday activities and interactions that we take for granted, ordinary life, in short - preparing supper, eating it with one's family, washing the dishes - would become precious.

Our friend's quotation is poignant, because he is a rare survivor, four years after its discovery, of pancreatic cancer. Only 24% of its victims survive the first year after its diagnosis, and only 5% survive for five years. This year our friend suffered several hospitalizations, endured heroic treatments, including liver chemoembolization (don't ask), and almost died. Nonetheless, each time he's released from the hospital, he maintains as normal a routine as possible, going to his office every day and traveling frequently with his only child, a high school baseball star, to the team's playoffs all over the country. He hope now to attend his kid's high school graduation this June.

Not for our friend reclining under a palm tree or visiting exotic locales. No, he's living his everyday life. In an earlier post, I wrote of Emily Webb in Our Town. As a ghost she revisits her home on the morning of her twelfth birthday and tries to talk to her parents, who can neither see nor hear her, as they go about preparing for the day. The everyday life she so longs for, taken for granted while she was alive, now seems achingly precious. When she returns to the graveyard, she asks the Town Manager, Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute? And he replies, No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some. It's a good bet that our friend has joined the company of saints and poets in at least one respect, in experiencing the wonder and the glory of the everyday.

Detesting Old Age

I have detested old age from my infancy, Mark Twain remarked, towards the end of October 1895, and anything that removes from me even for a few moments the consciousness that I am old is gratifying to me. He was addressing a society of journalists in Melbourne at the end of an evening in which they had gathered to honor him. It was, he said, a peculiarly pleasant evening - a darling evening of my life, because during the two or three hours he had spent with them, he felt young again. In the next month, he continued, he would turn 60, but during that evening, in their company, he felt "rejuvenated."

Mark Twain cannot be trusted when he talked about himself in public, since he sometimes employed exaggeration and invention to flatter an audience or to achieve other effects. He may not have always detested old age. But in Melbourne, beset by persistent boils and financial worries, he was probably sincere when he referred to himself as old. His contemporaries, at any rate, agreed with him. He was in Melbourne at the time, because that city was one of the many stops on his year-long "lecture tour" of the English-speaking world. His "lectures" were in fact performances that appeared to be extemporaneous talks but were in fact meticulously rehearsed. Many newspaper reviews of his performances, often mentioning his gray locks, would refer to him as an old man.

Today, people in their sixties resist calling themselves old, not only because life expectancies are longer, but also because they want to appear younger. Our fetishizing of youth leads many older people to resort to plastic surgery, hair coloring, and "rejuvenating" creams in order to appear more youthful. If plastic surgery has not removed their wattles and double chins, they sometimes wear turtleneck shirts and sweaters to minimize or conceal them. The desire to remain healthy is only one motivation for their dietary and exercising regimes; they also want to retain (or regain) their youthful figures. It's not only women who try to look younger. Some aging male politicians have hair that is implausibly black, and plastic surgeons report many men among their clients.

In an e-mail to a friend, I wrote that recently I had entered my 80th year. Assuming that I had turned 80, he congratulated me for having passed that landmark. When I explained that I was only 79, and that turning 79 marked the end of my 79th year and the beginning of my 80th, he wrote back asking me why I wanted to seem older than I am.

Eighty does seem a lot older than 79, just as $10.00 seems a lot more than $9.99, although the difference is minimal. But "80th year" sounds so much more impressive than 79, and that's why I referred to myself that way. Far from detesting old age, I'm unreasonably pleased with myself for having reached such an august stage of development. I don't mind appearing old, and I enjoy the deference that it occasionally inspires.

Anyway, it's just as well that I don't mind looking old. There's no point to coloring my hair, since I'm almost bald. A wig would make me look like a superannuated Harpo Marx, and besides it would probably itch. Plastic surgery to remove my facial wrinkles, wattles, spots, and other less mentionable marks of age, besides being ridiculous, would take too much time and money, and besides it would hurt. I'm happy to be old, and I hope to become even older.

Sportsman and Explorer

As a result of breaking a bone in my right foot the other day, I now wear a "soft cast." True, it's softer than a plaster cast, but it bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the steel boot that armored knights used to wear. A formidable array of leather, plastic, and Velcro straps, it both supports my foot, holding it together so to speak, and protects it from gunfire. Since my doctor doubted that my upper body strength would permit me to use crutches, I'm forced to minimize the pressure on my right foot by using a walker and pressing down on it with my arms when I move that foot.

Among the consequences of my injury is that I now have to explain it. When people first see me hobbling around, they look properly shocked. This is satisfying. But then they ask me what happened. What should I tell them? My ever-inventive niece suggested that I attribute my injury to a yachting accident, but if I didn't like that explanation, to kickboxing.

I don't know which of these is more implausible, but the yachting accident appeals to me. That's because I've long entertained a fantasy of sailing around the world in a large yacht and inviting my friends to join me on various legs of my journey. Would you care to sail with me from Papeete to Apia? No? Then what about Auckland to Sydney? Don't worry, I won't ask you to fasten ropes and swab the deck. A professional captain and crew will do all the work. The vessel will contain a respectable bar, wine cellar, and library, and of course the chef will provide sumptuous meals. (Remember, this is a fantasy.) Ah, here I am reclining on a chaise longue, sipping a rum and tonic while watching a glorious sunset. Are you sure you won't come along? But wait, the wind has come up. The captain suggests we go below. A sudden storm, unforeseen by the yacht's sophisticated electronic equipment, causes violent pitching and yawing. On the way down to my stateroom, I stumble. I fall. I break my foot. Wouldn't that be a terrific explanation? The trouble is that nobody would believe it. So when asked how I broke my foot, I shamefacedly admit that I haven't the foggiest idea. This is one of the disadvantages of my current position.

Another is the damage it's caused to my secret persona. Like Clark Kent, I have a hidden identity. Years ago, before Abercrombie and Fitch focused on the youth market, it sold me two pairs of chino pants which I planned to wear on my voyage around the world by surface transportation. A placard near the pants proclaimed that they were "the choice of sportsmen and explorers for 75 years." So as I walked along the main drag of Suva, and as I gazed at the Mongolian steppes from the window of a third-class compartment on the Trans-Siberian railroad, I would think of myself as a sportsman and explorer, one of the adventurous men who wore pants just like mine. But to be told that my upper body strength is insufficient for crutches is a cruel blow to this notion of myself.

Still another disadvantage is my feeling guilty about my wife's having to assume those of my household tasks that require my moving around, such as salad preparation, bed making, dish and laundry washing, and table setting. When I suggested to her that she is now paying me back for the time last year that I took on the menu planning, food shopping, and cooking, while she recovered from a hip replacement, she smiled. She asked me if I had forgotten my bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia, which for almost 50 years have put me out of commission, periods when she's had to nurse me and assume my domestic duties. To that list of illnesses she could have added periods of recuperation from my numerous operations ("you're a surgeon's dream," one doctor told me), but she's a kindly woman and stopped short of that. Some would consider temporary relief from such jobs as an advantage, but perhaps they've forgotten that I'm Jewish and thus prone to self-doubt and guilt.

But in the scheme of things, these difficulties are minor and best of all temporary. I can look forward to resuming in a month or two my career as a sportsman and explorer. After all, what does that doctor know?

Heath Bars and the World to Come

When I was a young man, I would buy a Heath Bar and, after opening its crinkly package, would bite into the toffee covered in milk chocolate, closing my eyes as I enjoyed its exquisite crunchiness, and then savor each subsequent bite. This is how I imagined the Olympic gods' ambrosia to taste. Okay, ambrosia doesn't your clog arteries nor promote dental decay, but when you're young you don't think about such matters. At least I didn't.

When we moved to Jerusalem, where we lived for 36 years, I stopped buying Heath Bars, which were unavailable there, and when we returned to America two years ago, I was unable to find them. I assumed they were no longer being made, until a month ago, when, dining at the home of my daughter and her family, we were served Haagen Dazs "Everything but the Kitchen Sink" premium ice cream, which includes Heath Bar chunks. Heath Bars! The ambrosia of my youth!

I started looking for them everywhere, at drug stores, supermarkets, and subway newspaper kiosks, but nowhere could I find them. When I told my daughter of my fruitless search, she said, "but they're sold everywhere." Encouraged, I continued looking for them, but I still couldn't find them. So I figured that their packaging had probably changed. After all, until we went abroad, I had watched their price rise inexorably from its original five cents, the bar shrinking all the while. Maybe their package had changed too. I was probably looking at them without seeing them. I abandoned my search until I could devote more time to examining the complete array of bars on the market.

In an earlier blog post I quoted the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, who said that in the World to Come, we will be asked to account for all the pleasures that we denied ourselves in this world. So when my daughter called me the other day to announce that she had bought me a Heath Bar, I felt compelled to follow rabbinic authority. On the other hand, dietary authorities might question the wisdom of eating Heath Bars, if I want to maintain my current weight and keep my cholesterol down. When I mentioned this conflict to my daughter, she said, "Dad, a Heath Bar won't kill you." Of course, she's right, but I know that my pleasure will be tinged with guilt.

A few years back, when a popular Israeli journalist learned that he had only six months to live, he threw a party for his friends. In his valedictory talk, he said that one of the advantages of his current situation was that he no longer had to floss his teeth. I don't expect to check out in six months, but even so, hasn't the time come, now that I've reached my eightieth year, to say to hell with all those killjoy rules and to eat what I want without feeling guilty? And if not now, when? After all, I don't suppose I'll find any Heath Bars in the World to Come.

"Pop"

Last Sunday, while my brother and I were standing on a traffic island, waiting for the light to change, he turned to the boy standing next to us. The boy, who looked as if he might be about twelve, was holding the leash of a standing dog. My brother, from his considerable height, bent towards the boy and said, in a voice he reserves for children, "What kind of dog is that?" The boy answered, the light changed, and we crossed the street.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't have remarked on that interchange because when my brother and I walk together, he often addresses children whom he sees on the way. The reason that it struck me was that on the previous day, as I was walking out of our building, a Fresh Direct deliveryman, a man I had never seen before, was trundling four cartons towards the building. As he approached me he called out, "Hi, Pop!" That was the second time within the past six weeks that a stranger has addressed me as "Pop."

The deliveryman felt free to address me familiarly just as my brother felt free to ask the boy what kind of dog he was walking, without prefacing his question with a polite phrase, such as "excuse me." If you were to ask strange adults for directions or to tell you the time, you would normally use such an expression in order to mitigate even that slight interference with whatever it was they were doing or thinking. In contrast, a simple assertion, such as "that's a nice dog," without any request for information, requires no mitigation because it demands no response.

Had I been twenty or even ten years younger, the deliveryman who called me "Pop" would have been unlikely to call out to me, "Hi, Mac" or "Hi, Buddy." But at this stage of my development, he viewed me in much the same way as my brother viewed the boy standing next to us on the traffic island, as a person not entitled to the deference or politeness normally accorded to strangers.

What do I have in common with the boy? For one thing, we are both physically non-threatening. A second, related characteristic is that neither of us is fully autonomous, independent, and competent. The boy is becoming so, just as I am becoming less so. I've left the workforce; my physical strength has markedly diminished, in spite of strength-training exercises - after climbing several flights of subway stairs, for example, I have to stop at the final landing until my aching thigh muscles allow me to continue walking; I've been hospitalized and visited emergency rooms more frequently in the past two years than in the previous ten; I spend much more time visiting doctors and medical labs than I used to; and I'm beginning to be dependent on others. Last weekend, for example, when I was unable to open a high kitchen window which must be reached over an unusually deep counter, I had to ask my brother, who was visiting us, to lift it for me. Unlike the boy that my brother addressed, however, I will probably become more dependent as I age further.

My wife pointed out a third feature that I may share with children - a quality that elicits a friendly response. When I encountered the deliveryman, I was wearing a red and purple cap with a pompom on top and I was probably smiling with pleasure at the beauty of the morning. Perhaps the deliveryman would have said nothing at all to me had I looked like a grouch. Even so, no matter how pleasant (or ridiculous) I may have looked, he would not have called out to me had I been younger.

When did I cross that invisible threshold, one that enables complete strangers to address me as "Pop?" And why does it bug me so? After all, I've entered my 80th year. I am old, although not as old as I hope to become. I know I should take such incidents in my stride. But they rankle. When a complete stranger calls me "Pop," it hurts, since the greeting indicates that the speaker views me as a less autonomous, more dependent person than he is. He has placed me in the same category as he would a child. The truth hurts. And I don't like it one bit.

Siblings and Other Friends

The New Yorker's Thanksgiving cover this year shows a large turkey. Superimposed on the bird's body are pieces to be carved from it, each marked with the name of the diner to whom it will be served. Among the guests are "Glutton Brother and Picky-Eater Wife," "Loudmouth-Parolee Brother-in-law," and "Brother's Klepto Wife."

The unfortunate host who carved that turkey last week may not represent a majority of turkey carvers this year, but his feelings are far from unusual. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners are notorious for reviving youthful jealousies and resentments, when siblings who live far apart come together again and often regress to childhood in their relations with one another. On Thanksgiving Day last week, the Times recounted disasters at past Thanksgiving dinners, "Insults, Breakups, Slaps, and Tears," sent in by readers. These included several screaming matches between siblings.

I'm happy to report that I'm not among the number of feuding siblings. When my brother and sister and their spouses get together with my wife and me, I'm glad to see all four of them. I not only love my brother and sister but I also like them. I feel the same way about their spouses, who've been married to my siblings so long - 51 years for one couple and 49 for the other - that they have become my brother and sister too. I enjoy being with all four of them and consider them my friends as well as my siblings.

Unlike my other friends, my brother and sister share my childhood. Now that my parents and their generation have gone, my siblings are the ones who know me longer than anyone else. Our bond is indissoluble and would remain so even if we didn't like each other. But just as my brother and sister knew me as a child, my other friends know me as an adult and have seen me in contexts unavailable to my brother and sister.

Our friends in Jerusalem served as a surrogate family while we lived there, and now that our homes are on different continents, we still keep our connection through telephone calls, e-mails, and visits when they come to New York as they almost inevitably do. Our friends in New York, in contrast, share with us a different history, for they knew us before we left for Jerusalem. Following the rule that a couple's friends reflect mostly the wife's choices, most of our New York friends are women with whom my wife went to school or to college (sometimes to both) and their husbands, with whom we quickly became friends. They attended our wedding, we attended theirs, and we watched their children grow up, marry, and start their own families in turn, just as our friends watched ours, even though these observations were made at a distance. We saw these friends briefly whenever we came to New York in summers or on breaks between semesters and more extensively during our sabbatical years. They have greatly helped our reintegration into American life, just as our Israeli friends helped our integration into Israeli life.

Now that Brooklyn has become our sole residence, we have started to make friends here as well. Whether old friends or new, based in New York or Jerusalem, our friends have enriched our lives. We couldn't ask for better friends (or siblings) and they make us thankful indeed. Taken together, our friends and our siblings have sustained us from childhood to old age. If they all joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, we'd order lots of turkeys so that we could give each one the best possible cut.

How to Live to 100

Last week I wrote about people I've known who lived to extreme old age more or less independently in their own homes. How did they become so old and age so successfully? Jane Brody, in a recent article on centenarians in the Times, looked at some of the answers.

Hazel Miller, who was interviewed for Brody's article along with six other centenarians and a 99-year-old, had one answer: "There's no secret about it, really. You just don't die, and you get to be 100." That's a good answer, because although we know that genes, life style, and personality all play a role, their individual contributions can only be estimated. One reason for our limited predictive ability is the role of chance or luck, which is by definition unpredictable.

The contribution of heredity, while important, is surprisingly small. Brody cited a Swedish study, based on a sample of identical twins separated at birth and raised apart. It found that heredity explained only twenty to thirty per cent of variation in longevity. Lifestyle, according to the Swedish study, seems to be the most important factor. But lifestyle, of course, is comprised of many components. Which are the most important?

A U. S. Government study that was reported in a separate article in the same issue of the Times, explored the "Hispanic Paradox." Although Hispanics in America are more likely to be poor and less likely to be covered by health insurance, they outlive African-Americans and non-Hispanic whites. On the average, Hispanics in America live eight years longer than African-Americans and two and a half years longer than non-Hispanic whites. Elizabeth Arias, who compiled the statistics, suggested that two factors explain the discrepancies, a lower rate of smoking and "close social and family ties."

Indeed, Brody reported that a study of centenarians in Sardinia found that in addition to being physically active, they tended to maintain strong ties with family and friends. They were also less likely to be depressed than the typical 60-year-old. As for personality, a study of almost 100,000 American women found that the optimists were healthier and significantly less likely to die of heart disease than pessimists, who were also less likely to exercise and more likely to be overweight and to smoke.

Many of the interviewees quoted in Brody's article mentioned strong social ties, exercise, and an optimistic outlook on life. Centenarian Travilla Demming reported that "I always put anything disagreeable or bad out of the way...Just get rid of it or rise above it." Esther Tuttle, 99 years old, said "I am blessed and I have worked on it. You've got to work, be cheerful, and look for something fun to do. It's a whole attitude." She also advised people to follow their doctors' advice. And Mae Anderson, 103 years old, said that she tries to live in the present and not dwell on past mistakes. Thinking about "what you should have done or could have done is not going to help you."

Still, not all the interviewees for Brody's article appeared to be positive thinkers. Otto Seidel, 101, complained about his loss of memory. "And it's a stinker, because it makes you feel miserable at times." And Gladys D'Less, 100, said that she feels useless and "not doing any good to anybody."

Centenarian Phil Damsky, who lived independently until a year ago, when his family insisted that he move into an assisted living facility, reminded us that no one lives forever, and so it's important to "enjoy every minute that you're living. I think that's good advice."

So, if you hope to live to be 100, stop smoking, keep your weight down, exercise regularly, maintain your friendships and your family ties, work at something you like to do, follow your doctor's advice, try to look at the bright side of things, and hope that a bus won't knock you down on your way to the gym. And while you're at it, follow Phil Damsky's advice: enjoy every minute that you're alive. That's good advice even if you're not aiming to reach 100.

Two Weeks with a Goddess

Some of my readers have asked me about my namesake, Anchises. He was a prince from a territory near Troy. He was so beautiful as a young man that Aphrodite fell in love with him. Disguised as a princess, she spent about two weeks with him, but he didn't realize that she was a goddess until nine months later, when she presented him with their infant offspring, Aeneas, and revealed her identity. Later, when he was drinking with some buddies, Anchises bragged about his affair with the goddess. This so enraged Zeus - the telling not the kissing - that he hurled a thunderbolt at him, laming him for life. That's the reason that Aeneas had to carry Anchises on his back as they fled the burning city of Troy.

Anchises accompanied his son on his adventure-laden travels before his death and burial in Sicily. And his story doesn't end there, because Aeneas visited him in the underworld, where Anchises explained what his son was seeing. But I'll omit Anchises's post-Trojan history, since what I really want to write about are, of course, those two weeks he spent with Aphrodite. Perhaps my opinion would be different were I in my twenties, but from the vantage point of old age, two weeks with a goddess seems rather trying. As the old joke goes, first prize is a week with [supply your own film star here], and second prize is two weeks.

Aphrodite and Anchises couldn't have made love 24-7 for two weeks could they? Maybe it would have been possible for a goddess, but not for a mortal. They have had to come up for air from time to time. Then what did they do? I suppose they ate and drank something, although from our point of view the comestibles and potables of the time would have been pretty unappetizing. The variety of strawberry that grew wild in the ancient world was pretty meager, not at all like its American cousin, which was introduced into Europe a couple of thousand years later. The French did not yet exist so there was no champagne. And of course ambrosia and nectar were unavailable to mortals.

And what could they have talked about? Not literature, since there wasn't any literature, even though Anchises and Aphrodite were to become the subjects of literature. In any case, they were both probably illiterate. And since Aphrodite didn't reveal her divinity until nine months later, she couldn't talk about life on Mount Olympus, and what in the world could he have told her that she would have found interesting? Hadn't she seen everything already? So I suppose that they looked into each other's eyes, where they saw what they imagined to be their soul mates. But how long can you do that without blinking?

It was probably Aphrodite who became bored first. In any case, she left her lover behind. After all, she had had plenty of other affairs and could look forward to an eternity of new ones. But Anchises did not get the worst of their relationship. After all, Aphrodite gave him Aeneas, who saved him from the sack of Troy and made his name immortal. Two weeks with a goddess, I guess, would be worth that.

Until 120

Last week I wrote a letter of condolence to friends who had lost their mother. She had been living in her own home, fully ambulatory and compos mentis. During her last illness, surrounded by her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, she managed to say goodbye to each of them as she drifted in and out of consciousness. She was 100 years old. She had lived a good life and, if death can ever be said to be good, she experienced a good death too.

I never had the privilege of meeting her. But writing that letter prompted me to think about some of the people I have known who reached a great age living more or less independently in their own homes. Two of my aunts lived to be 99. I can't vouch for the mental acuity of one of them towards the end of her life - the last time I saw her, at her granddaughter's wedding, she smiled sweetly but said very little. The other aunt, on the other hand, my mother's twin, never lost her tart sense of humor nor her willingness to fence with those who called on her.

My wife's cousin, who lived to 101, complained two years before she died that she could no longer both swim and take a walk, as she had long done, if she also had a luncheon engagement on the same day. She was forced to choose one or the other. At her 100th birthday party, she commented that when people told her she hadn't changed, she knew they were lying. My brother then said that she was still one of the sexiest women he had ever met. Her immediate response was, "I never said I wasn't sexy."

A friend of my wife's parents continues as chairman of the Wall Street investment advisory and brokerage house he founded. He's now 104. Although one of his sons now runs the firm on a day-to-day basis, the old man, who goes to the office every day, still provides valuable counsel.

A good friend, who died last year, lived to be 97. At 95, he complained that when he got out of bed in the morning, he found himself "walking like an old man." I told him that he was entitled, at 95, to walk like an old man and what else did he expect? Stupid me, that was the wrong thing to say, and he was not amused. But this year I learned how he felt. The other day, I asked a friend how old her mother was when she died. Upon learning that she died at the age of 89, I said, "I used to think that 89 was old." My friend, still a comparatively young thing, laughed and said "but you are old!" I suppose she's right, but it doesn't seem that way to me except when I've reached the top of several long flights of subway stairs.

When my dentist wanted to crown one of my teeth a few years ago, I told him that the device didn't have to last for 40 years. In response, he told me about his grandfather, who, at the age of 92, worried that he'd outlive his money. His son, after examining the old man's finances, reassured him, telling him that he could live for the next fifteen years without making any changes in his expenditures. "Yes," replied the old man, "but then what?" Now I know how he felt too.

Judith Viorst, who published a slim volume of light verse on the occasions of her fiftieth and sixtieth birthdays, produced another on the occasion of her seventieth, I'm Too Young to be Seventy and Other Delusions (2005). She wrote that ninety is old, and maybe 80 is too, although she won't decide about that until she gets there. In the meantime, she said, let's drink wine, make love, and learn new things. Amen to that.

A common Hebrew toast, on the occasion of an elderly person's birthday, is "ad meyah ve'esreem," literally "until 120," the age at which Moses died on Mount Tabor, as he gazed upon the Promised Land below, in full possession of his faculties. When Judith Viorst reaches that age, may she be too young to be 120. So may we all.

A Generous Heart

A few weeks ago we attended as guests the board meeting of a small charitable foundation in Boston. It was its last formal meeting, because under the terms of the founder's will and the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the trust must be disbanded by next June. At this meeting, the final disbursement of funds was decided.

One of the speakers was Donna Suskawicz, who had come to thank the foundation for its support of the Irving K. Zola Center for Persons with Disabilities at Brigham House, 20 Hartford Street, Newton Highlands, MA 02461. Indeed, although the foundation had been granting the center a relatively small sum each year, it had been the center's principal source of support.

Ms. Suskawicz is a woman with a disability whose personal journey made her painfully aware of the special needs of persons with disabilities, many of them very poor. (Her experiences with disability are included in the book Working Against Odds by Mary Grimley Mason.) She decided to take practical steps to help.

At first, she collected empty plastic bottles, redeemed them for pennies per bottle, and used the funds to buy pizza for those she knew were in need. Eventually, with help from the Gorin Foundation, small grants from local banks and groups and private donations, she leased a house in Newton, a Boston suburb, which she named in memory of Brandeis professor Irving K. Zola (1935-1994), who specialized in medical sociology and actively promoted the rights of persons with disabilities.

The Zola Center (Brigham House) is a drop-in community center open Saturday afternoons, a welcoming place where persons with disabilities can meet one another and socialize. (Saturday is Ms. Suskawicz's only free day, since she works full time at her job during the week and on Sundays drives to New Hampshire to assist her elderly parents.) The center offers computers with internet access, a large-screen TV with HD, DVD and CD players, a sewing machine, pool table, and meeting room. The center also operates a food pantry. Local bakeries, restaurants, and supermarkets, including the branches of national chains such as Whole Foods, donate food, which Ms. Suskawicz and other volunteers collect and distribute.

The center also offers computer lessons, meditation classes, reiki treatments, shows by artists with disabilities, concerts highlighting musicians with disabilities, lectures by authors with disabilities, a support group for women with disabilities, help in writing resumes, and an annual Christmas party, particularly welcomed by those without families nearby.

In addition, it encourages persons with disabilities to pursue ham radio operation for emergency communication and as a hobby, offering, in cooperation with the Boston Amateur Radio Club, a "License in a Weekend" workshop to prepare for obtaining an FCC radio license. Under a grant from Avon Products, the center offered full scholarships to women with disabilities to participate in the workshop and to purchase radio equipment, a program which Ms. Suskawicz presented at the United Nations International Forum on the Status of Women.

The foundation will make its final grant to the center in December. Thereafter, Ms. Suskawicz must secure other sources for its support. Rent for the house is the principal expense, since the center has no employees, with all the work performed by volunteers. The Irving K. Zola Center is a non-profit 501(c) corporation, contributions to which are eligible for a federal tax deduction. They may be made payable to Brigham Community House/Zola Center and sent to Brigham House, c/o Donna Suskawicz, 1860 Commonwealth Avenue, Brighton, MA 02135-6002 or to Donna Suskawicz, Zola Center, 20 Hartford Street, Newton Highlands, MA 02461.

Donna Suskawicz shows us that we don't have to have a personal fortune in order to help repair the world. She put into action the notion that the needs of others become our spiritual obligation. May we take her example to heart.

Jock

The other day, as I was returning home from my morning walk in Prospect Park, I stopped at a corner to wait for a traffic light. Next to me stood a man about my age. He wore no hat over his shock of white hair. Instead he sported a wide black sweatband around his forehead. Completing his outfit were a dark red sweatshirt, shorts in a shade of lighter red, black tights, white crew socks, and the kind of sport shoes manufactured by Nike. He wore glasses, secured by a cord around his neck. His chin muscles had collapsed, forming a great wobbling wattle.

His back curved by osteoporosis, he had planted his feet firmly apart. Seeing that there was no oncoming traffic at the moment and not waiting for the light to change, he marched across the wide expanse of Eastern Parkway. He held his arms slightly away from his trunk, as if they were too muscular to be brought any closer to it, and he moved with a kind rolling, tough guy, don't mess with me gait. Perhaps he had once been an athlete, a linebacker maybe, but he now walked stiffly, with effort, and although he appeared to be trying to walk quickly - cars could materialize at any moment - he was even slower than I am.

Good for him, I thought, as I watched him make his laborious way across the street. He's not giving up but doing his best to retard his physical deterioration. Yet at the same time, I thought him slightly ridiculous. Here was a bent old man who dressed and carried himself like a 25-year-old athlete out for a run.

The incongruity between his physical appearance and his presentation of self struck me as both comical and poignant - funny because his manner and dress were at such variance with his physical condition and sad because they only emphasized his decay. Yet he wasn't giving up, but struggling against the erosion of age. If his appearance is any indication, he will rage against the dying of the light, if he's not doing so already.

The old man looked as if he wouldn't give a damn if he learned of the discrepancy between his vision of himself and the impression he makes on others. If I were in his Nikes, though, I'd be mortified. Still, who am I to criticize him? I probably have comforting illusions about myself too. So if you know what they are, keep them to yourself.

Fashion Icon

Fashionistas, you already know that Anna Dello Russo is the editor at large and creative consultant for Vogue Japan and that she writes an influential fashion blog. Until last week, I had never heard of her. If there is such a thing as a fashionisto, I'm not one of them. I continue to wear the kind of clothes I wore 60 years ago when I was a college student.

I learned about her in the Style section of last Thursday's Times. Until then, I had no idea that the editors of fashion magazines have become style icons, fashion celebrities whose clothes and blogs are eagerly followed by the female under-thirty set, who are abandoning these editors' glossy magazines in favor of the editors' blogs.

What caught my attention was the large photograph occupying the entire top quarter of the Style section's first page. It shows Anna Della Russo in Paris last month during Fashion Week. She's walking past four decidedly unfashionable white-haired old ladies who are seated on a park bench at the rim of an artificial pool, in which fountains play. Outside the park's greenery stands a block of beautiful 18th century buildings.

She's wearing a black coat, piped in gold braid and trimmed in white fur, with form-fitting sleeves. Her coat is very short, its hem in the stratosphere at least twelve inches above her knees. Her high-heeled platform shoes are colored gold, matching the piping on her coat and accentuating the curves of her legs. With her broad shoulders and slim build, she could have stepped off a runway were it not for her tousled hair, unless messy hair is the latest craze. If it is, then the old ladies are fashionable in at least that respect.

Ms. Della Russo's outfit is arresting, but even more so are the expressions of the old ladies who are watching her walk by. At their feet are four identical open straw baskets, banded by cloth flowers at the top. A caption for a second, smaller photo on an inner page, describes the women as visitors to the city. They probably have come into town together to go shopping and those pretty baskets are one of their trophies. The two ladies seated in the middle of the bench are looking at Ms. Dello Russo with slightly opened mouths. The other two ladies, one at each end of the bench, are smiling as she walks by. It's as if a giraffe had suddenly materialized. It would be expected at the zoo but not at this park in Paris. Astonishment and delight is what I see in their faces.

Is there also a touch of regret, a smidge of envy? Their youth has passed, they've gained 50 pounds, and they have never been nor will they ever be glamorous. No, these appear to be practical women who have worked hard all their lives and for whom following the dictates of fashion is as remote an ambition as learning to speak Swahili. They exhibit no regret, no envy, only pleasure at this unexpected apparition. The photographer has caught them during a moment of wonder, a moment that has lit up their day, a moment about which they will tell their families when they go home.

As for Anna Dello Russo, when she goes home she'll take off those dreadful shoes, which must be killing her feet, and heave a sigh of relief.

The Sex Life of Books

We were mystified for years. Let me explain. When we moved into our apartment in Brooklyn ten years ago, we brought with us a few books from Jerusalem, where we were living most of the time. These were the novels we were reading, some volumes about New York City in the early 19th century for a history I was writing, a detailed map of Israel, another of Jerusalem, and a Hebrew-English dictionary.

Even then we were too old fashioned to look on line for the meaning, spelling, derivation, and synonyms of words, so we bought the two-volume Oxford English Dictionary. and of course, we could not exist without a Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, so we acquired that too. After a few months we returned to Jerusalem.

Several months later still, we flew back to Brooklyn. Much to our surprise, the few books we had left behind seemed to have multiplied. We were puzzled, but in the end we shrugged. We bought a large bookcase in which we installed the books that been here before, including the ones we had evidently forgotten. The bookshelves looked very nice, but they were relatively empty, a far cry from our overflowing bookcases in Jerusalem.

We stayed in this apartment for a few months before returning once again to Jerusalem. How many books could we have bought during that time? How many books could we have received as gifts? Not many, right? But when we came back to Brooklyn, we found more books in the bookcase than we had remembered. Again we were puzzled. Again we shrugged.

We traveled back and forth between Brooklyn and Jerusalem until two years ago, when we sold our apartment in Jerusalem and moved to Brooklyn permanently. In the past, we returned to Brooklyn, we found more books in the bookcase than we had left behind. We could chalk that up to faulty memory. But now that we were here all year round, our books continued to multiply. You're not going to tell me that from one day to the next we can't remember what's in our bookcase, are you? It's not as if it's never happened before. Ecclesiastes, written probably in the third century before the current era, warned us that "of making of many books there is no end."

After searching for the simplest possible solution, we finally figured it out. After we turn out the lights and go to bed, the books make love to one another, producing still more books. Histories beget histories, novels multiply novels, dictionaries spawn dictionaries, and biographies breed biographies. Propinquity on the shelf seems to be the operating principle for coupling, providing, as Shaw described marriage, maximum temptation with maximum opportunity. True, there are some unexplained productions, new progeny left on the steps of an orphanage, so to speak. A historical novel, for example, can't be explained by the closeness on a shelf of a history and a novel. But if we've put a book in the wrong place, as often happens, that mystery is solved as well.

The books are very discreet. More than once I've tried to catch them in the act. I'd creep into the living room at night and turn on the lights, yet never have I caught a pair in flagrante delicto. I decided at last to let them alone and to let nature take its course. Books, after all, will be books.

Dancing under the Gallows

"Dad, you MUST watch the trailer for "Alice Dancing under the Gallows," said my daughter, who had phoned me just to tell me that. "It's on You Tube." Since she's a sensible woman, not given to trivialities, I followed her advice. I'm glad I did, because as usual she was right.

The trailer is for a documentary film about Alice Sommer, who, 106 at the time of filming, is the world's oldest Holocaust survivor. In 1942 she was a well-known concert pianist living in Prague, when, at age 39, she was deported to Theresienstadt, along with her six-year-old son, Rafi. The Nazis employed that camp as a propaganda device, to show the world how well they were treating Europe's Jews. Thus, starving actors and musicians performed for the other starving prisoners. Under the constant threat of extermination, both performers and audiences were, in the words of one of Alice Sommer's friends, "dancing under the gallows."

For propaganda purposes, children were allowed to stay with their parents, the only concentration camp in which this was done. Alice Sommer remembers giving more than 100 performances - playing, for example, the complete Chopin Etudes by heart - while being unable either to feed her son or to explain to him the reason. He sang in the children's choir and, with his mother's support, also survived the war.

She now lives alone in a small flat in North London, where friends visit her in the afternoon and where she practices the piano for two and a half hours a day. People stop on the sidewalk outside the building to listen to her music. Her playing of Bach, Mozart, and Chopin serves as background to her interview. Music, she believes, saved her life. "Music is God."

"I never hate," she said, not even the Nazis, for hatred breeds hatred. Deeply interested in the lives of those she meets, she loves people, she tells the interviewer. "I love everyone." What strikes the viewer is her radiant happiness. "Every day, life is beautiful." She suffered unimaginably during the two years of her incarceration, yet she remains an optimistic, positive woman, who considers herself the luckiest person in the world. It's important, she said, not to complain but to look at the bright side of things and to be aware of the beauty of life.

I watched the video shortly after listening to Krista Tippett's "On Being" (formerly known as "Speaking of Faith"), an American Public Media program broadcast by NPR on October 28. She moderated a roundtable discussion on "pursuing happiness," in which the participants included His Holiness, the fourteenth Dali Lama and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom. As I listened to Alice Sommer, I was struck by the resonance of her words with the statements made by these men.

"The whole purpose of life is for happiness," said His Holiness, who, like Alice Sommer, radiates happiness. "The whole purpose of our existence is for happiness." Rabbi Sacks seemed to agree that we were made to be happy, for he cited the Jerusalem Talmud. This ancient commentary holds that in the World to Come each us will be held to account for all the legitimate pleasures we denied ourselves.

The Dali Lama has known exile and suffering but, he said, he always looks for the possibility of good inherent in tragedy. In turn, Rabbi Sacks cited the biblical report of Jacob's wrestling with the angel. "I will not let you go," Jacob told the angel, "until you bless me." Rabbi Sacks said that he will not let go of suffering until he finds the blessing it contains.

After surviving the hell of Theresienstadt, nothing again ever seemed worth complaining about, said Alice Sommer. That she remains optimistic and good humored, laughing frequently during her interview, is a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit and an inspiration for us all.

A Time Outside of Time

I sometimes dream I'm in Jerusalem, our home for 36 years. I walk the same streets, see the same cityscape, without any sense of homecoming, for Jerusalem is, in my dream, the grounds of everyday life, taken for granted. Only when I awaken do I realize where the dream had taken place.

Brooklyn is now our primary residence, indeed our only residence, for two years ago we sold our home in Jerusalem, with its high ceilings, light-filled rooms, and balcony flowers. We loved living there and we'd be there still had our children not done to us what we had done to our own parents and moved to another continent.

We changed in many ways during our stay in Jerusalem, although it's sometimes hard to know whether the change is a function of aging or of residence in the city. Is my heightened appreciation of friendship, for example, a function of the extraordinary closeness among friends that Jerusalem fosters? There, it sometimes seemed, almost all our friends knew one another. Because most of us had arrived in Jerusalem with no family other than our children, we served as each other's surrogate family - as the aunts, uncles, and grandparents who had been left behind. Or would my friendships have deepened even if I had never left America?

One fundamental change with which Jerusalem is indisputably responsible is that it was there we began to observe Shabbat. The city itself and our circle of friends were conducive to its observance. On Friday afternoons, from our apartment in the city center, we could hear the traffic noise gradually diminishing. Stores, offices, restaurants, and places of amusement closed, bosses stopped running, and by the time the municipal siren announced candle-lighting time, the city was quiet.

Our friends often invited us to share their Sabbath meals, where they introduced us to the Sabbath home rituals, the kiddushim and other ceremonies that set the Sabbath apart from the rest of the week. With the help of a tape that my boss kindly made for me, I learned these rituals, and it gave me much pleasure to enact them in the presence of friends, for it was the rare Sabbath meal without guests at our home or at those of our friends.

Neither my wife nor I is religiously observant, but we found in Shabbat a weekly oasis of sanctity and serenity, a time outside of time, a time amazingly restorative. Now that we're back in New York, we continue to observe Shabbat. Our daughter, her husband, and their son come to us every Friday evening for dinner, when our grandson, who is being raised as an observant Catholic, has an opportunity to absorb the songs, the ceremonies, and the atmosphere of the Jewish Sabbath. The tradition will continue, I hope, if not with him, then with the children of our son, who recites kiddush with my grandfather's kiddush cup.

Recently I dreamed that my wife and I were in Jerusalem, somewhere in the Maalot Dafna neighborhood, where we hailed a taxi. We asked the driver to take us home. He drove all over the city but no matter where he went he was unable to find it. That part of our lives is over. But Shabbat remains with us still.

Surprised by Joy

Recently, as I was walking to Prospect Park, I turned to the east to check for oncoming traffic. The sun had risen a few minutes before, and vivid, long pink clouds formed wide streaks along the entire visible sky. The unexpected sight was so lovely that I gasped, revivifying the hackneyed expression of "taking one's breath away." I was, in the words of Wordsworth's sonnet, "surprised by joy." The primary emotion that Wordsworth expressed, however, was not joy but grief tinged by guilt.

Wordsworth's poem doesn't specify the source of his unexpected joy. It tells us instead how impatient he was to share it with his beloved. He immediately turned to her to "share the transport," and then he remembered that she was dead, "deep buried in the silent tomb." He castigated himself for having forgotten, even for a moment, that she was gone.

When I recalled his sonnet, my astonished pleasure in the sunrise became muted. I'd tell my wife about the sunrise when I returned from my walk. She'd listen, understand, and enter into my pleasure. But before too long, one of us will be in Wordsworth's position, bereft, yet still wanting to tell the other something.

For years after my mother died, I caught myself wanting to phone her about something, before remembering that she was dead. She's been gone now for almost 60 years, and I no longer find myself wanting to phone her. My father, though, who died a little more than 30 years ago, is a different story. I occasionally find myself wanting to tell him my news. "I must tell Dad," I think to myself and then I remember that of course I cannot. But the impulse to talk to him has become less frequent with time, and were I to live long enough, it would probably die out completely, as it did with the urge to talk to my mother.

Neither my wife nor I is likely to live long enough, after the inevitable bereavement one of us will face, to stop wanting to tell the other something, before a sudden pained realization that the time for sharing is over. After that astonishing sunrise, my recollection of Wordsworth's sonnet made me promise myself to treasure the time we still have together.

Stepping Outside the Box

Not the least of the pleasures afforded by The New York Times are its obituaries. No, reading the obituaries is not a morbid indulgence. Those of you who have read them - articles that summarize the lives of notable people who have recently died - know that they are often both witty and instructive and sometimes inspiring as well.

One of the most remarkable people who've had the distinction of a Times obituary was Richard T. Gill, who died recently at the age of 82. When he was almost forty and a tenured professor of economics at Harvard, he managed to break his two and a half pack addiction to cigarettes. In order to help himself stay clean, he took singing lessons. Without any prior formal training, he had nonetheless always liked to sing, but after a few years of lessons and rigorous practice, it became clear that he was a world-class basso profundo. "Mr. Gill soon forsook chalk and tweed for flowing robes and very large headgear."

The author of tomes such as Economics and the Private Interest: an introduction to microeconomics became a featured player, first at the New York City Opera and soon after at the Met, where he performed 42 times. His obituary, by Margalit Fox, quoted John Rockwell's review of Prof. Gill's 1975 performance as Pimen, in Boris Godunov. "He has one of the most beautiful, focused lyric bases around, mellow yet with a really black quality, and his shaping of this noble music was most persuasive."

One could die happy after a review like that, but I'm glad to say that he waited another 35 years. His career as an opera singer spanned 14 years, a period in which he continued to publish books on economics. He then returned to academic life, but instead of continuing with economics, he ventured into demographics, writing Our Changing Population, with Nathan Glazer and Stephan A. Thernstrom, and Posterity Lost: progress, ideology, and the decline of the American family.

As if this versatility were not impressive enough, before embarking on his career in opera, Prof. Gill published short stories in The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. Later he hosted a 28-part television series on economics. Most of us, who are pleased if we can succeed in even one field, read such an obituary in wonder and awe at what's humanly possible if so rarely attained. Prof. Gill might at least have had the good grace to be homely, but he didn't oblige us even in that. The two photographs published with his obituary, one of them in the role of Frere Laurent in Romeo et Juliette at the Met in 1974, show a handsome man. This was hardly fair.

Few can aspire to such distinction. Still, Prof. Gill showed us what's possible when we have the courage to step outside the boxes that we create for ourselves.

Appearances

For the past three years I've participated in a longitudinal study at a New York hospital. Every few months I report to an office, where I'm given a blood test, an interview by a nurse-practitioner, and finally an exam by the doctor running the project.

Recently I returned to the hospital for this routine drill. The nurse-practitioner, a sturdy, balding, unsmiling man with a no-nonsense manner, who had interviewed me once before, asked me the same questions he had asked me the last time, the same questions I'd been asked for the past three years. But after asking the usual questions - about, for example, appetite, the frequency of bowel movements and urination, and the presence or absence of pain, he asked me a new question. "Can you take care of yourself?"

Bewildered, I asked him what he meant. "Can you dress yourself, bathe yourself, and eat without assistance?" Stunned, I answered, "so far." I had walked with him from the waiting room to the examination room. Hadn't he noticed my firm tread? Did he believe that it was even remotely possible that I could not perform any of those functions? True, I'm a bit bent now and I'm only a few weeks shy of my 79th birthday, but there are centenarians who can feed and bathe themselves and go to the bathroom without help.

Still, the nurse-practitioner was asking what he considered to be an appropriate question. During the past few months I must have crossed an invisible threshold. Will I have crossed another before my next visit? Will he want to know if I can tell him that day's date or name the president of the United States? After all, I'm just as likely to be no longer compos mentis as that someone will have to feed me, perhaps even more likely.

His question reminded me of the frequent lack of correspondence between our perception of ourselves and the impression we make on others. When I strode into the waiting room, dressed in a new tweed sports jacket and a snazzy bow tie, I had seen myself as a fine figure of a man. After the interview I saw what the nurse-practitioner had seen, an old man in danger of losing it.

From now on, I hope I remember that interview when I start to think disparagingly about people who dress or groom themselves in an unbecoming manner. Up until now, I would wonder if they understood how they looked. But now I realize that of course they don't. That heavy woman thinks that her tight jeans makes her look thinner. That old lady thinks that her bright lipstick, plunging neckline, and mini-skirt make her look younger. That man with the comb over thinks that no one will notice he's almost bald. That guy who's never changed the size of his belt and now wears it under a great bulge in his stomach thinks that people won't notice his girth. But what harm are these illusions? Isn't it better that these folks see themselves as looking good than to know the truth? I wish I could still think of myself as a fine figure of a man. But who would be fooled? As I came home, a middle-aged stranger, sitting on a packing crate in front of a convenience store, called out to me, "How y'doin', Pop?"

A Man from Yonkers

He was sitting across from me at the doctor's office. Perhaps 10 years younger than I, he looked as if he might be a retired banker, although he was reading the Post rather than the Times or the Wall Street Journal. A tall, trim, good-looking man, he boasted a full head of white hair, and his shoes, which were beautifully shined, looked expensive. We had to leave the office at the same time, and as walked together out onto the street and towards our respective subway stations at Columbus Circle we struck up a conversation.

We agreed in praising our doctor for his patience, kindness, and good humor. As my companion spoke I concluded that banking was an unlikely profession for someone with his accent, which seemed to me to be uneducated. He lives in Yonkers, he said, in the cooperative apartment that he and his mother had shared until her death. He wears no wedding band, so I guessed that he's probably a life-long bachelor. Indeed, although he's not at all effeminate, he exhibits the slight fussiness that's seen in many men who have never married.

Perhaps he's lonely. At any rate, he kept up an almost continuous stream of chatter, as I said very little, maintaining eye contact, nodding and inserting an occasional comment to show that I understood what he was saying. He seemed grateful for an attentive listener.

Among the facts I learned about him are that he avoids sodium, especially as found in processed foods, but that he makes one exception. He cannot eat corn on the cob without salt. We discussed healthy eating, ending that topic when he asserted that no matter what he ate, when the Lord was ready to take him, he'd have to go. He seems to be doing his best, however, to help the Lord postpone that invitation, since he doesn't smoke, avoids fatty meats and sodium (except for corn on the cob), and, judging from the absence of visible small veins on and around his nose, doesn't drink heavily.

He's an enthusiastic Yankees fan and used to attend lots of ball games with his friends. Nowadays, though, he wouldn't dream of attending a game because of what he views as the exorbitant cost of a ticket. That's bad enough, he said, but you can no longer bring food or drink into the stadium, leaving you at the mercy of ridiculous prices for a hot dog and beer. Seats used to be inexpensive enough that whole families would attend games together, he told me, and they'd bring a full picnic hamper with them. Now he only watches the games on television. He didn't seem optimistic that the Yankees would win the pennant, although if they managed to win the next two games, they'd have done it once again.

"Do you remember Phil Rizzuto?" he asked. "Sure," I said, not telling him that I knew only that he was an old-time baseball player, but that I had no idea what he team he'd played for. (Later, a Google search told me that he was an outstanding Yankee short stop in the '40s and '50s.) His salary was only $35,000, my friend told me. We agreed that $35,000 was not a shabby salary in the '40s and '50s, but that even if you multiplied it by 10, it would represent small change for today's millionaire major league players. We both thought this crazy.

We had been chatting as we walked up 59th Street and were now on the corner of Ninth Avenue, where we stopped. I knew he had to cross the avenue in order to reach his subway at Columbus Circle, but he made no move to do so. He continued to talk. Finally, eager to avoid the subway rush hour, I asked him if he was going to cross the street. We crossed together, but before I could say something to end the conversation in a way that would not hurt his feelings, he said that he wouldn't keep me much longer, but that he had to tell me a story.

When he was younger, he said, he had some friends who were Giants fans. Once these friends went to Ebbets Field to watch the Giants play the Dodgers. His friends were only a few blocks from the field, but they didn't know how to reach it. They approached a policeman and asked for directions. "Who are you rooting for?" he asked. Later they realized that it was a mistake to have told him, because he sent them in the wrong direction, taking them out of their way by one or two miles.

But even after telling me that story, he did not stop talking. He continued to touch on a miscellaneous array of topics for at least another five minutes. I could see that he was reluctant to lose a good listener, and I was curious how long he could keep up his stream of talk, but I didn't want to get home late, and so I told him (truthfully) how much I had enjoyed talking to him, and then we both said goodbye and wished each other good luck.

Communication

The recent revelation that the New York City Board of Elections has printed ballots for the upcoming elections with incorrect instructions, reminded me of three personal interactions within the past month in which communication was faulty. The first was with a Verizon technician based in India, whom I called for help in installing a new router. He asked me to use the yellow router cable to connect my router and computer.

In fact the cable is black with a yellow tag. Once I understood what he meant, I plugged the cable into both router and computer, but the desired effect did not follow. "Did you insert both plugs?" he asked. I told him that there was only one plug - the transparent plastic device you pinch in order to insert a cable into a jack - and that I had plugged the other end of the cable into a computer port. "No," he said, "there are two plugs. You insert one into the router and the other into the computer." I was mystified until I noticed that one end of the cable was double-headed, with both a plug and a metal end that goes into the port. Once I understood the construction of the cable, we were able to proceed.

There were several problems leading to difficult communication here. Although his English was fluent, it was sufficiently accented that several times I had to ask him to repeat himself, a difficulty compounded by my defective hearing; he could not see what I was doing; and he mistakenly assumed that I understood the structure of the cable. Background knowledge is assumed in almost all communication and the lack of it impedes comprehension.

In the second incident, the other person was a native speaker of English, we were next to one another, and I had no difficulty hearing him. I was standing on a narrow traffic island on Flatbush Avenue, between Prospect Park and the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, waiting for the light to change, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to find a tall, large, middle-aged man standing next to me. Smiling, he extended his arm in my direction and, thinking that he wanted to shake my hand, I took his hand. I wondered if he had mistaken me for someone else or if he had used a ploy, sometimes seen abroad, in which a conman or a beggar approaches a tourist. He was clearly surprised. When I understood that in fact he hadn't wanted to shake my hand, I figured that he wanted to shake the hand of the man on the other side of me. I laughed and gave the first man a playful mock punch. But no, he hadn't wanted to shake anyone's hand. Finally, he spoke. "Look behind you." Then I saw that an old lady with a walker was trying to get up onto the traffic island and that I was blocking her way. Once I understood what he wanted, I moved aside, but why in blazes hadn't he spoken up in the first place instead of using gestures?

The third incident occurred only last Shabbat, when I was looking for the opened bottle of Riesling that I had put into the refrigerator the night before, planning to use it as a back up if our lunch guests finished the new bottle we were serving. "Is it in the cupboard?" asked my wife. "No," I said, "I can only find the unopened one." In fact I was looking at last night's bottle. I had forgotten to put the unopened bottle in the refrigerator the night before. It was, as my wife suspected, in the cupboard, but that only came to light later. In the meantime, I had to open a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon instead, a wine that need not be cooled beforehand. Fortunately, it was just enough.

There are many instances of miscommunication between my wife and me, and no doubt some of them are never discovered. When I consider that we share the same language and rules for speaking it and much of the same background knowledge, I conclude that we should be more surprised than we are when two people with much less in common manage to understand each other perfectly.

Identity

At our annual visit to the Israeli consulate last week, we heard Hebrew all around us. There was an exception, however, a short, sturdy, elderly man who was speaking in slightly accented English. We couldn't place his accent except to be pretty sure that it wasn't Israeli. Because the seats on which we were sitting were close to the reception window, where he was standing, we couldn't help overhear his conversation with the clerk.

He told the clerk that he had fought in the Palmach, the elite combat unit of the Jewish pre-state military force, but that he hadn't lived in Israel for 50 years. Whenever he goes to Israel, he said, he's hassled because he has no Israeli passport, and therefore he wanted to renounce his Israeli citizenship. The clerk pointed out that he could easily stop the hassling by obtaining an Israeli passport, but he was adamant. He didn't want a passport. He was a supporter of Israel, he said, but he didn't want to be a citizen. Finally the clerk gave him the papers he needed and sent him to the appropriate window to present them.

If the old man had fought in Palestine before the establishment of the state in 1948, he would have spent 12 years in Israel after the state's independence plus whatever time he had spent before independence serving in the Palmach. That's enough time to learn Hebrew. That he was speaking English to a Hebrew-speaking clerk conveyed an implied message: I'm not one of you. The medium was indeed the message. His use of English strongly suggests that he did not identify himself as an Israeli and that he wanted official confirmation of that change.

His attitude was hard for us to fathom, for while we identify ourselves as Americans, we also think of ourselves as Israelis and cannot imagine renouncing either identity. But few identities, it seems, are impervious to change. Even that most basic identity, gender, can be altered. Although the transsexual who has changed from male to female still possesses XY chromosomes, she can convincingly present herself to the world as a woman and can think of herself as one. About half of all American adults have changed their religious affiliation at least once, although for Jews, the ethnic component of their identity probably remains the same. A prominent example was the late Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, who was born a Jew and always considered himself one.

Prompted by overhearing the Palmach veteran ask to renounce his citizenship, I realized that although some of my identities are not likely to change - male, husband, father, brother, American, Israeli, and Jewish - others have dropped out and still others added. I no longer think of myself as a student or as a teacher or as a researcher. On the other hand, identities such as army veteran, husband, father, and Israeli were adopted one by one as time went by. Our identities change with our circumstances.

They say our cells regenerate every seven to ten years, yet we remain the same person. In view of our changing identities, however, do we really remain the same? I thank whatever gods may be that I'm not the person I was at 31, my age at which we married (my wife says I'm a decided improvement over that young man). The intervening decades have seen changes in my attitudes, perceptions, and experience, and I no longer look at the world in the way I did when I was young. It's hard to rid myself of the illusion that there's an inner, unchanging personal core, but when I consider the changes that have taken place over the years, I'm not so sure.