Youth

In a recent post, I wrote that if a genie offered to grant me three wishes, I wouldn't ask him to make me look like a young man. Still, it's better to look like a young man than to be one. Just as one must pass through the stage of raising children in order to become a grandparent, one needs to struggle through one's youth in order to reach old age. To everything there is a season, but I'm glad the youthful season is over. In the words of the song by Lerner and Loewe, I'm glad I'm not young anymore.

No more confusion, no morning after surprise. I spent a long time confused and surprised, especially when I worked for Abraham and Straus, at that time Brooklyn's premier department store (since absorbed by Macy's). For three years my boss, a Harvard MBA, class of '29, terrorized me, and long after I left his employ, he inhabited my nightmares. I'll say this for him, though, he taught me the importance of a sense of urgency. (He only had to ask me once, "Do you know what it feels like to have a red hot poker up your ass?") During this interval I kept asking myself whether there might not be more to life than expediting the delivery of men's socks, cuff links, handkerchiefs, and underwear from the stockroom to the sales floor. To find an answer, I partied every weekend and on some weeknights too, only to discover that riotous living could yield no consistently compelling answers. I'm thankful that stage is over.

No self-delusion, that when you're telling those lies, she isn't wise. I'm glad I'm no longer moonstruck, consumed by longing, misconstruing polite smiles for encouragement. The tiny remark that tortures you - gone. No more gathering up my courage to ask for a date, no more anxiety about possible rejections - "sorry, I have to wash my hair" was a popular put down when I went to college - and on the other side of that jagged coin, no more hurting a girl's feelings, which was sometimes just as painful. I'm thankful that stage is over.

I'm glad I don't have to relive our wedding trip, when I struggled to make conversation at breakfast, lunch, cocktails, and dinner with that nice young woman I married but scarcely knew. I found it a huge effort to find anything to say, yet I had somehow to do it for 16 hours a day! (Only a few years ago that I discovered she had felt the same way.) Now, when our conversation is inexhaustible, I recall that first trip with both nostalgia and relief that it's over.

I'm glad I no longer have to lecture in Hebrew, preparing the lecture first in English, then in Hebrew, rehearsing endlessly. No longer do I need to look up words in a Hebrew-English dictionary, often with results mystifying to my students. When I looked up "dichotomy," for example, I found chitsui, which sounded reasonable since it's based on the root shared by the Hebrew word for "half." But when I used the term my students looked at me blankly. I resorted to English: "dichotomy." "Oh," they chorused, "dikotomia."

I'm glad I'm no longer the father of adolescents, although to be fair, mine inflicted far less grief than most, less than I feared they might, less perhaps than they should have, and no doubt less than I deserved. No more worry when they took the family car and then stayed out late. No more anxiety when they served in the army. No more falling in love with their girl friends and boy friends who, it turned out, were just trial runs. My kids' accomplishments after their adolescence continue to make me proud, so I needn't have worried about them as much as I did during a stage that I'm thankful is over.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not sorry I went through any of those stages, all necessary, all providing more pleasure than pain. Without them I wouldn't be the person I am today. If they didn't build my character, at least they helped me understand the feelings of others adrift in similar boats. All and all, I've had a good ride. It's just that I don't want to revisit any of the stations along the way. Been there, done there, and I'm glad I don't have to do any of it again. I've never been so comfortable before, Oh I'm so glad I'm not young anymore. It's time for something new.