A few weeks ago, as a friend of mine and I were leaving a restaurant after lunch, we encountered a street vendor sitting behind a table on which he had arranged many large leather-bound volumes, some of them in sets, and a pile of vintage Life magazines. It was another miserably hot and humid day in a summer of hot days, and my friend called out to the vendor, "You need air conditioning out here!" The bookseller laughed, revealing several missing teeth at the front of his mouth.
My friend had uttered his pleasantry without breaking his stride, intending to move on, but before we could do so, the bookseller told us that he had bound the volumes on the table himself, in the rare-book dealer's workshop above the restaurant where had just eaten lunch. Das ist ein buch, responded my friend. The bookseller, who recognized Kant as the source, was so delighted that he jumped up and repeated the sentence. A brief conversation in German and Yiddish then ensued between him and my friend (who later told me that the man's accent in both languages was perfect as far as he could tell), before lapsing back into English.
The bookseller stuck out his hand, introduced himself, and told us that the books and magazines on the table belonged to the rare-book dealer above the restaurant and that, after having bound the books, he was selling the lot on commission. He also ran a book bindery, he said, in Sheepshead Bay. His father had been a rare-book dealer, he told us, and he himself had carried on that trade for twenty years in a basement shop on the East Side, until his crazy landlady quadrupled his rent. "Crazy" doesn't do justice to his expletive-laden description of her, but that was the gist of it. He didn't enter the rare-book business right away. No, for some years he had managed a mob-run restaurant around the corner - here I lost his explanation of why he left that occupation - and began dealing in rare books.
The bookseller told us about being prosecuted for violating an order of protection. The prosecutor, who tended to spit when speaking forcibly, kept spitting in the bookseller's face during the trial. The bookseller accused him of battery and told him that if any more spit landed on him, he'd knock him out. After the prosecutor continued his spray, the bookseller lunged at him, hitting him hard, creating a sensation in the courtroom. Was the bookseller dragged away in handcuffs? We didn't ask. For all we knew, he was out on bail. He mentioned a few other physical altercations, actual and threatened, making it clear that he was not a man to be trifled with.
Displaying a mixture of profanity, invective, and erudition, with scarcely a sentence innocent of a four-letter word, he spoke energetically and emphatically, his frame and hands in a perpetual dance as he talked. A thin wiry man of medium height, he was perhaps 60. The lamentable state of his teeth and the fact that he was selling, on the street, the stock of another vendor suggested that his business affairs had not prospered. Was he worried about his future? If so, it was not apparent. He seemed entirely good humored, living in the moment while telling stories from his past.
After about fifteen minutes of spirited talk (mostly by him), we broke away. If I had been by myself, I would have passed him by in silence, which would have been a shame, because I would have missed listening to an extraordinary talker. How many equally colorful characters do I pass by without ever knowing it? As for this one, may he live to 120.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Two Friends
A recent BBC program on Alzheimer's Disease called to mind two good friends whom the disease has killed within the past ten years. Both were in their early 70's when they were diagnosed with the illness, and both perished within five or six years after the diagnosis.
The first to die was a colleague of mine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an enormously learned man, a specialist in Semitic languages, and the author of many scholarly publications. I often turned to him for help and not always for academic purposes, as when I asked him to translate for me the Amharic inscriptions on our Ethiopian paintings. He was a brilliant conversationalist, a sparkling Roman candle of a talker, and an incomparable spinner of anecdotes and jokes. To this day I relate some of his stories, although never with the same brio or effect.
He was lamentably diminished the last time I saw him, almost silent, when he and his wife came to dinner at our home in Jerusalem. Within a year or two he moved into a facility that could give him the care that had become increasingly difficult to provide for him at home. By that time, he recognized few people other than members of his immediate family. I could never bring myself to visit him there, a failing for which I continue to criticize myself. But I continue to think of him. Even today, when I'm stumped by a question, I often think sadly that he would have known the answer.
The second friend to die was a children's- book writer and a witty and imaginative publishing publicist (to promote the sale of a book, one of a series, in which the heroine finally marries, she sent out engraved invitations for a book party at a fancy hotel, complete with wedding cake), but she's best known for a memoir that's sold almost one million copies and has been translated into numerous languages.
She was keenly interested in Israel, which could do no wrong, as far as she was concerned, in contrast to her generally liberal views about American political matters. She was to the right of Attila the Hun, her husband used to say, in her positions regarding Israel, but this was consistent with her fierce loyalty towards those she loved. Definite in her opinions, she expressed them forcibly, but she wisely refused to read drafts of her friends' books, not wanting, she said, her own work to be influenced by them. This always struck me as an excuse. It would have been painful for her to give a negative opinion, were it justified, and it would have been equally painful for her to dissemble. But she was endlessly encouraging to her friends during their own struggles with their work.
There was something clearly wrong with her the last time we saw her in Jerusalem, which she often visited during the time we lived there. At a reception, she looked lost, strangely quiet and melancholy, not totally present. As her disease progressed, she required a full-time caregiver at home. The last time we saw her, at her home in New York, the nervousness and anxiety which had never been far distant from her seemed to have gone, replaced by a sunny calmness. Yet shards of her personality caught the light, creating for a moment, now and then, the illusion that she was unchanged.
If there were any justice in the world, such brilliant friends as these would have been spared. But Alzheimer's Disease in indiscriminate, and as I approach my eighties, I worry about my own susceptibility as well as that of my wife, my brother and sister, and their spouses. About half of all those older than 85 are diagnosed with the disease, an incidence about 14 times as high as among those who are 65-69. But as I often say, we tend to worry about the wrong things. I hope that this is one of them.
The first to die was a colleague of mine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an enormously learned man, a specialist in Semitic languages, and the author of many scholarly publications. I often turned to him for help and not always for academic purposes, as when I asked him to translate for me the Amharic inscriptions on our Ethiopian paintings. He was a brilliant conversationalist, a sparkling Roman candle of a talker, and an incomparable spinner of anecdotes and jokes. To this day I relate some of his stories, although never with the same brio or effect.
He was lamentably diminished the last time I saw him, almost silent, when he and his wife came to dinner at our home in Jerusalem. Within a year or two he moved into a facility that could give him the care that had become increasingly difficult to provide for him at home. By that time, he recognized few people other than members of his immediate family. I could never bring myself to visit him there, a failing for which I continue to criticize myself. But I continue to think of him. Even today, when I'm stumped by a question, I often think sadly that he would have known the answer.
The second friend to die was a children's- book writer and a witty and imaginative publishing publicist (to promote the sale of a book, one of a series, in which the heroine finally marries, she sent out engraved invitations for a book party at a fancy hotel, complete with wedding cake), but she's best known for a memoir that's sold almost one million copies and has been translated into numerous languages.
She was keenly interested in Israel, which could do no wrong, as far as she was concerned, in contrast to her generally liberal views about American political matters. She was to the right of Attila the Hun, her husband used to say, in her positions regarding Israel, but this was consistent with her fierce loyalty towards those she loved. Definite in her opinions, she expressed them forcibly, but she wisely refused to read drafts of her friends' books, not wanting, she said, her own work to be influenced by them. This always struck me as an excuse. It would have been painful for her to give a negative opinion, were it justified, and it would have been equally painful for her to dissemble. But she was endlessly encouraging to her friends during their own struggles with their work.
There was something clearly wrong with her the last time we saw her in Jerusalem, which she often visited during the time we lived there. At a reception, she looked lost, strangely quiet and melancholy, not totally present. As her disease progressed, she required a full-time caregiver at home. The last time we saw her, at her home in New York, the nervousness and anxiety which had never been far distant from her seemed to have gone, replaced by a sunny calmness. Yet shards of her personality caught the light, creating for a moment, now and then, the illusion that she was unchanged.
If there were any justice in the world, such brilliant friends as these would have been spared. But Alzheimer's Disease in indiscriminate, and as I approach my eighties, I worry about my own susceptibility as well as that of my wife, my brother and sister, and their spouses. About half of all those older than 85 are diagnosed with the disease, an incidence about 14 times as high as among those who are 65-69. But as I often say, we tend to worry about the wrong things. I hope that this is one of them.
Friday, September 24, 2010
The Voice from the Whirlwind
The great storm that swept through Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens eleven days ago generated two tornadoes, one of which touched down in Park Slope, not far from our home, and produced winds that reached 125 miles per hour. As my wife and I watched the storm from our windows (only later did we learn it was dangerous to stand there), the sky darkened, visibility was reduced to just a few feet, and heavy rain flew past us horizontally with great force. It was the day before Yom Kippur, the Day of Awe, but religious observance on that day has never created in me the awe I felt while watching that storm. For ten or fifteen minutes, the universe made its primordial power overwhelmingly manifest, as it did human impotence in the face of that power. I could almost hear the Voice from the Whirlwind asking, Who cut a channel for the torrents / and a path for the thunderstorms...?
Like my wife, I fasted on Yom Kippur. Unlike her, I stayed at home, as I've done for the past 20 years or so, whereas she went, as she unfailingly does, to religious services. I've asked her why she attends services, since she considers herself an agnostic. "This is my tradition," she always replies, "my story." Regular attendance at synagogue services, not only on the High Holidays, but every Shabbat, helps connect her to the majesty of the universe and her place in it. She also attends because the congregation is our community and she doesn't want to disassociate herself from it.
I feel bad that I've separated myself from it in this way, but the liturgy irritates me enormously. If I attended services, I would have to utter words which I cannot believe, which would keep prompting me to say to myself, "No! No! No!" I'm unable to view the liturgy's references to God as metaphor. Still, I miss the drama of striking my breast, as one by one I, along with the rest of the congregation, recite a litany of sins, some of them personal, others communal. Even if we haven't personally committed these sins, we're responsible for the fact that others have done so. I like the modesty of the request that we make, for one more year in which to improve ourselves, although now that I'm approaching 80, the request doesn't seem quite so modest. But I'm even less capable of chesbon hanefesh - examination of the soul - in the synagogue, where I carry on an internal argument with the prayer book, than I am at home.
So I considered my sins in quiet contemplation at home and hoped that those I've offended during the past year have forgiven me. And I thought about the power of the universe, as glimpsed the day before.
Like my wife, I fasted on Yom Kippur. Unlike her, I stayed at home, as I've done for the past 20 years or so, whereas she went, as she unfailingly does, to religious services. I've asked her why she attends services, since she considers herself an agnostic. "This is my tradition," she always replies, "my story." Regular attendance at synagogue services, not only on the High Holidays, but every Shabbat, helps connect her to the majesty of the universe and her place in it. She also attends because the congregation is our community and she doesn't want to disassociate herself from it.
I feel bad that I've separated myself from it in this way, but the liturgy irritates me enormously. If I attended services, I would have to utter words which I cannot believe, which would keep prompting me to say to myself, "No! No! No!" I'm unable to view the liturgy's references to God as metaphor. Still, I miss the drama of striking my breast, as one by one I, along with the rest of the congregation, recite a litany of sins, some of them personal, others communal. Even if we haven't personally committed these sins, we're responsible for the fact that others have done so. I like the modesty of the request that we make, for one more year in which to improve ourselves, although now that I'm approaching 80, the request doesn't seem quite so modest. But I'm even less capable of chesbon hanefesh - examination of the soul - in the synagogue, where I carry on an internal argument with the prayer book, than I am at home.
So I considered my sins in quiet contemplation at home and hoped that those I've offended during the past year have forgiven me. And I thought about the power of the universe, as glimpsed the day before.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The Elm and Judge Brown
Last Thursday's extraordinarily violent storm roared through Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens, downing power lines and thousands of trees, ripping off roofs, and killing a driver who had pulled over to the side of the road. The next day, I wondered if my favorite tree in Prospect Park, an ancient, magisterial elm on the West Drive, had survived. On my way to the park that morning, I passed a downed pine tree in the front yard of a neighboring apartment house. When I turned left onto Plaza Street, I could see that part of the road had been closed to traffic. Two large trees had fallen, taking with them large chunks of concrete sidewalk and blocking the road.
As I walked up the park's West Drive, I had to watch my step in order to avoid tripping over the fallen branches that were littering the road. I thought of Scarlett O'Hara's journey home from Atlanta during Sherman's march to the sea. Everywhere she saw devastation. Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the wind that had swept through Georgia? Like Tara, my elm was still standing. But it had not escaped unscathed. A tree-maintenance crew had roped off that part of the road that passed under it, enabling a worker to saw off some of the tree's partially broken limbs that were in danger of falling onto the road. Perhaps six branches had already crashed to the ground. This was not the first time a large branch had been ripped from the tree. It has long sported a neatly sawed off limb, lower than the ones that had broken off on Thursday.
My fondness for the tree stems not only from its grandeur, but also from the fact that last fall it looked particularly spectacular. Unlike the other trees nearby, whose leaves were bright yellow, the elm was late to turn color, providing a striking and stubborn contrast to the picturesque leafy decay nearby, as can be seen in the photo above. Yes, the tree was still standing, but its newly fallen branches had taken with them great chunks of foliage, reminding me of a patient's head, partly shorn for brain surgery.
Slowly the tree is shrinking, like the Honorable Wesley E. Brown, the 103-year-old Federal judge, featured in last Friday's Times. Both the elm and the judge are survivors. He's still hearing cases, although he avoids those that are likely to last a long time. His frame has shrunk, he's bent over, he relies on an oxygen feed, and he no longer walks the four flights up to his office, but his mind remains as acute as ever, still green in contrast to his body's decay.
I'm unlikely to live to 103, let alone live that long with my mind still intact. The chances are only 50-50 that one can survive one's eighties without becoming demented to one degree or another. Of course, I hope that I'll be in the lucky 50% if I live that long, but hope is not a program. In the meantime, I'll try to use to the fullest whatever abilities I possess. If I can remain, like Judge Brown, cognitively green, I will be fortunate. If one by one I lose my branches, so to speak, I will at least have been standing a long time, if not as long as either the elm or Judge Brown.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Woody Allen
In an interview on Wednesday, Woody Allen, 74, was asked how he felt about aging. Well, I'm against it. [laughs] You don't gain any wisdom as the years go by. You fall apart, is what happens. People try and put a nice varnish on it, and say, well, you mellow. You come to understand life and accept things. But you'd trade all of that for being 35 again.
I'm not any smarter now than I was at 35, but if the substantial and varied experience I've gained since then hasn't made me wise, it has at least made me wiser. It's also true that I can't do as many push-ups now as I could when I was 35 (in fact, I can't do any now), but I'm not disintegrating. In some respects I'm in better shape than I was then. I'm exercising regularly and maintaining a more sensible weight, and my hypertension is finally under control. Maybe I'm kidding myself and maybe my doctor would disagree, but I consider myself reasonably fit. No, I'm not falling apart, but I will concede that I don't have the energy and strength of 35.
Woody Allen seems not to have accepted with good grace his getting older and it's probably true that he hasn't mellowed either. As for me, I'm still impatient and nervous, but I'm less impatient and nervous, and fewer things bother me than used to be the case. Have I come to understand life? No. But I think I understand it better than I did. And I have accepted, even welcomed, becoming old. Aging is a normal part of development and I want to continue developing. Returning to 35 would be a regression.
Perhaps many oldsters would agree with Woody Allen and trade, were it possible, the benefits of old age for the chance to be 35 again. But not me. At 35 I was so absorbed in my career and my young children that I wasn't conscious of much else. I was unable to stand still for even a minute to appreciate the wonder and joy of life. Ever since seeing the recent revival of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, I've been thinking about the question posed by Emily's ghost: Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?
This morning, as I walked in Prospect Park and watched the grim twenty and thirty somethings jogging along, often checking their watches as they did so, I wondered if any of them appreciates how wonderful it is simply to be alive. I didn't at that stage of my development. But if age has given me anything, it's the ability to savor life, to take pleasure in being present. I find this an adequate compensation for the loss of youth's strength and energy. Yes, I disagree with Woody Allen, but that won't stop me from seeing his newest film.
I'm not any smarter now than I was at 35, but if the substantial and varied experience I've gained since then hasn't made me wise, it has at least made me wiser. It's also true that I can't do as many push-ups now as I could when I was 35 (in fact, I can't do any now), but I'm not disintegrating. In some respects I'm in better shape than I was then. I'm exercising regularly and maintaining a more sensible weight, and my hypertension is finally under control. Maybe I'm kidding myself and maybe my doctor would disagree, but I consider myself reasonably fit. No, I'm not falling apart, but I will concede that I don't have the energy and strength of 35.
Woody Allen seems not to have accepted with good grace his getting older and it's probably true that he hasn't mellowed either. As for me, I'm still impatient and nervous, but I'm less impatient and nervous, and fewer things bother me than used to be the case. Have I come to understand life? No. But I think I understand it better than I did. And I have accepted, even welcomed, becoming old. Aging is a normal part of development and I want to continue developing. Returning to 35 would be a regression.
Perhaps many oldsters would agree with Woody Allen and trade, were it possible, the benefits of old age for the chance to be 35 again. But not me. At 35 I was so absorbed in my career and my young children that I wasn't conscious of much else. I was unable to stand still for even a minute to appreciate the wonder and joy of life. Ever since seeing the recent revival of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, I've been thinking about the question posed by Emily's ghost: Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?
This morning, as I walked in Prospect Park and watched the grim twenty and thirty somethings jogging along, often checking their watches as they did so, I wondered if any of them appreciates how wonderful it is simply to be alive. I didn't at that stage of my development. But if age has given me anything, it's the ability to savor life, to take pleasure in being present. I find this an adequate compensation for the loss of youth's strength and energy. Yes, I disagree with Woody Allen, but that won't stop me from seeing his newest film.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Descendants
On Sunday morning, a bit before noon, a taxi collected our California son, his wife, and their three children, ages four to almost ten, and took them to JFK for their flight home. They had stayed with us for four days. During that time, we abandoned all hope of following a normal routine, indeed any routine at all, and devoted ourselves to our guests.
Breakfasts lasted much of the morning as one by one our descendants awoke. Our grandchildren never wanted to eat immediately, needing time to collect their thoughts and to prepare their digestions for Honey Nut Cheerios, with skim milk and bananas. Our elder granddaughter, who will be eight in a few months, cheerfully announced that she never eats anything that she hasn't eaten before, but fortunately Honey Nut Cheerios and bananas are on her approved list. Our younger granddaughter, four years old, would usually be ready to eat only after the table had been cleared and the food put away.
Our children would take their kids off for some activity during the afternoon, and then we would all eat dinner together, mostly at home but once at a restaurant. After dinner, our Brooklyn grandson, almost twelve, who spent much of each day with his cousins, would play chess with our other grandson. It was a pleasure to see them together, hunched over their chess board, contemplating their next moves.
But the greatest pleasure afforded by our grandchildren, it seems to me, has been the opportunity they've given us to observe our children as parents. We've passed on the baton, so to speak, and we're grateful that capable hands have grasped it. Our kids represent a considerable improvement over their father, who was much less relaxed and patient with them than they are with their children.
My reactions to my grandchildren's behavior during their visit reminded me how uptight I was as a father. When my granddaughters were throwing a large ball back and forth in our living room, I had to clench my fists to prevent myself from being a killjoy and asking them to stop. There are no priceless antiques in that room, I kept telling myself, and if the ball hits a pot and breaks it, so what? It won't be a Ming vase.
At the restaurant in which we ate our last dinner together, our younger granddaughter wandered off to an unoccupied table. My impulse was to go after her - maybe she would disarrange the cutlery! I had to remind myself that she was my children's responsibility, not mine, and that messing up the cutlery would not constitute a Class A catastrophe. Just as she hadn't broken anything when throwing the ball around, she didn't touch the table or its setting. That my children survived my nervousness testifies to the importance of a child's having two parents. The chances are good that at least one of them will be sensible.
Four days is a short stay when your house guests are your children and grandchildren, not seen for the past six months. Just as we felt elated when they arrived, we felt deflated after they left. Alone, in a strangely silent, empty apartment, we started to restore it to its status quo ante, missing them and looking forward to their next visit.
Breakfasts lasted much of the morning as one by one our descendants awoke. Our grandchildren never wanted to eat immediately, needing time to collect their thoughts and to prepare their digestions for Honey Nut Cheerios, with skim milk and bananas. Our elder granddaughter, who will be eight in a few months, cheerfully announced that she never eats anything that she hasn't eaten before, but fortunately Honey Nut Cheerios and bananas are on her approved list. Our younger granddaughter, four years old, would usually be ready to eat only after the table had been cleared and the food put away.
Our children would take their kids off for some activity during the afternoon, and then we would all eat dinner together, mostly at home but once at a restaurant. After dinner, our Brooklyn grandson, almost twelve, who spent much of each day with his cousins, would play chess with our other grandson. It was a pleasure to see them together, hunched over their chess board, contemplating their next moves.
But the greatest pleasure afforded by our grandchildren, it seems to me, has been the opportunity they've given us to observe our children as parents. We've passed on the baton, so to speak, and we're grateful that capable hands have grasped it. Our kids represent a considerable improvement over their father, who was much less relaxed and patient with them than they are with their children.
My reactions to my grandchildren's behavior during their visit reminded me how uptight I was as a father. When my granddaughters were throwing a large ball back and forth in our living room, I had to clench my fists to prevent myself from being a killjoy and asking them to stop. There are no priceless antiques in that room, I kept telling myself, and if the ball hits a pot and breaks it, so what? It won't be a Ming vase.
At the restaurant in which we ate our last dinner together, our younger granddaughter wandered off to an unoccupied table. My impulse was to go after her - maybe she would disarrange the cutlery! I had to remind myself that she was my children's responsibility, not mine, and that messing up the cutlery would not constitute a Class A catastrophe. Just as she hadn't broken anything when throwing the ball around, she didn't touch the table or its setting. That my children survived my nervousness testifies to the importance of a child's having two parents. The chances are good that at least one of them will be sensible.
Four days is a short stay when your house guests are your children and grandchildren, not seen for the past six months. Just as we felt elated when they arrived, we felt deflated after they left. Alone, in a strangely silent, empty apartment, we started to restore it to its status quo ante, missing them and looking forward to their next visit.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Milestones and The Blue Whale
The other day, my wife and I took our eldest grandson, who will be twelve in a few days, and the eldest of our visiting California granddaughters, who will be eight in a few months, to the American Museum of Natural History. Our grandson planned an agenda that he hoped would appeal to our granddaughter, who had not visited the museum before: first the Hall of African Animals, then the Hall of Biodiversity, and finally the Hall of Ocean Life. As far as our granddaughter was concerned, these were excellent choices, for she found the exhibits compelling (as did her grandparents, even though we had seen them many times before). It was in the last of these halls, with its great blue whale hanging over an enormous exhibit space, that I received an unwelcome truth.
Our grandson referred to the whale as model. "A model?" I asked. "You mean it's not a stuffed animal?" "No," he said, "it's a model. It's not real." For years I had thrilled to the sight of this creature, the largest mammal in the world. I would imagine it swimming up from the tropical regions in which it was born to the remote icy waters in which it had spent most of each year gorging on krill. I would picture its death agonies as it was harpooned and slaughtered. "Not real?" "No," said my grandson, "not real."
But when I thought about it, I could see that it was unlikely that the beautiful, graceful, huge blue mass - the length of three city buses and, if it were real, originally weighing 400,000 pounds - had been transported, preserved, and mounted for our edification at the American Museum of Natural History. I began to wonder what other unexamined assumptions I hold that are untrue. It was like being told that the moon is not, as I had supposed, made of green cheese. Of course, not, I would tell myself, as soon as the idiocy of the assumption was pointed out to me, but only then.
I'm accustomed to asking my children for expert advice, but not my grandchildren. But now that I think about it, this was not the first time that my grandson has proved a useful source of information. As far back as two years ago, he showed me how to operate my new digital camera, and if I ever need help with a new digital device, it will be to him that I'll turn. Shortly before we entered the Hall of Ocean Life, he had pointed out, in the Hall of Biodiversity, figures otherwise invisible to me, and in the Hall of African Animals, he had indicated details, such as small birds removing insects from the flanks of herbivores, that I would never have noticed alone.
Unlike the revelation about the blue whale, which was unwelcome, the sudden knowledge that for some time my grandson has been mature enough to teach me about my surroundings was welcome. I was happy to acknowledge this milestone in his development, which he had passed some time ago. It had also been a milestone for me, and like many other milestones, this too was unnoticed at the time.
Our grandson referred to the whale as model. "A model?" I asked. "You mean it's not a stuffed animal?" "No," he said, "it's a model. It's not real." For years I had thrilled to the sight of this creature, the largest mammal in the world. I would imagine it swimming up from the tropical regions in which it was born to the remote icy waters in which it had spent most of each year gorging on krill. I would picture its death agonies as it was harpooned and slaughtered. "Not real?" "No," said my grandson, "not real."
But when I thought about it, I could see that it was unlikely that the beautiful, graceful, huge blue mass - the length of three city buses and, if it were real, originally weighing 400,000 pounds - had been transported, preserved, and mounted for our edification at the American Museum of Natural History. I began to wonder what other unexamined assumptions I hold that are untrue. It was like being told that the moon is not, as I had supposed, made of green cheese. Of course, not, I would tell myself, as soon as the idiocy of the assumption was pointed out to me, but only then.
I'm accustomed to asking my children for expert advice, but not my grandchildren. But now that I think about it, this was not the first time that my grandson has proved a useful source of information. As far back as two years ago, he showed me how to operate my new digital camera, and if I ever need help with a new digital device, it will be to him that I'll turn. Shortly before we entered the Hall of Ocean Life, he had pointed out, in the Hall of Biodiversity, figures otherwise invisible to me, and in the Hall of African Animals, he had indicated details, such as small birds removing insects from the flanks of herbivores, that I would never have noticed alone.
Unlike the revelation about the blue whale, which was unwelcome, the sudden knowledge that for some time my grandson has been mature enough to teach me about my surroundings was welcome. I was happy to acknowledge this milestone in his development, which he had passed some time ago. It had also been a milestone for me, and like many other milestones, this too was unnoticed at the time.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Making Amends
A friend pointed out the following classified ad in the most recent issue of Harvard Magazine (September-October 2010, p. 69): I stole your cufflinks. Summer 1980. Shepard Street. Write newfreedom.how@gmail.com to arrange their return.
If the thief was an undergraduate at the time of the theft, he would be about 50 today. He might have been a graduate student, though, since Shepard Street is off campus. So maybe he's 60 by now. Or maybe he wasn't a student at all - a drinking buddy met at a bar? But hold on, might not the thief have been a woman? If so, perhaps she was upset by the end of a love affair or even by the man's lack of interest after a one-night stand. Maybe she stole the cufflinks in revenge. Or maybe, unable to part from her lover without some remembrance of him, she took his cuff links as a keepsake.
What about the victim of the theft? He was a probably a young man, although women sometimes wear cufflinks too. My guess is that by now he's forgotten all about the cufflinks, whereas the thief has not. Whether or not the theft has bothered the thief's conscience all these years - the culprit might also have forgotten about the cufflinks until coming upon them unexpectedly while, say, cleaning out a closet - the thief is finally trying to make amends.
I hope that the person whose cufflinks were stolen reads the ad, remembers the theft, and writes to the e-mail address supplied. The chances are good, though, that he won't look at the notice. If he's like me, he usually reads only the class notes and the obituaries. If so, the thief will never be able to make amends and the theft will forever weigh on the wrongdoer's conscience. A suitable punishment, you say?
Listen, nobody's perfect, and as Yom Kippur approaches, I think about my past sins and hope that the people I've offended during the past year will forgive me. It's too late to ask forgiveness from people I've wronged in the distant past, but if I could, I too would place a personal advertisement in Harvard Magazine. The trouble is, though, that I'd need to publish lots of different messages in lots of different magazines and papers, so it's just as well I can't.
If the thief was an undergraduate at the time of the theft, he would be about 50 today. He might have been a graduate student, though, since Shepard Street is off campus. So maybe he's 60 by now. Or maybe he wasn't a student at all - a drinking buddy met at a bar? But hold on, might not the thief have been a woman? If so, perhaps she was upset by the end of a love affair or even by the man's lack of interest after a one-night stand. Maybe she stole the cufflinks in revenge. Or maybe, unable to part from her lover without some remembrance of him, she took his cuff links as a keepsake.
What about the victim of the theft? He was a probably a young man, although women sometimes wear cufflinks too. My guess is that by now he's forgotten all about the cufflinks, whereas the thief has not. Whether or not the theft has bothered the thief's conscience all these years - the culprit might also have forgotten about the cufflinks until coming upon them unexpectedly while, say, cleaning out a closet - the thief is finally trying to make amends.
I hope that the person whose cufflinks were stolen reads the ad, remembers the theft, and writes to the e-mail address supplied. The chances are good, though, that he won't look at the notice. If he's like me, he usually reads only the class notes and the obituaries. If so, the thief will never be able to make amends and the theft will forever weigh on the wrongdoer's conscience. A suitable punishment, you say?
Listen, nobody's perfect, and as Yom Kippur approaches, I think about my past sins and hope that the people I've offended during the past year will forgive me. It's too late to ask forgiveness from people I've wronged in the distant past, but if I could, I too would place a personal advertisement in Harvard Magazine. The trouble is, though, that I'd need to publish lots of different messages in lots of different magazines and papers, so it's just as well I can't.
Friday, September 10, 2010
An Invisible Line
The other day a friend of mine told me that on a flight from New York to Hong Kong, about ten years ago, he had the good fortune to be seated next to an enchanting young woman from Hong Kong. Towards the end of their flight, he told her he'd be spending some time in her city and asked if he might call her. "Pete," she said, "you're an attractive elderly gentleman, but you're still an elderly gentleman." My friend, who was in his early sixties at the time, knew then, he told me, that he had crossed a line.
At about the same time, my sister and her husband became lost while hiking in an Hawaiian forest with friends, with whom they had become separated. Eventually they reoriented themselves and found their way back, only to learn that their friends had reported them lost and that a missing persons alert had been broadcast describing them as an "elderly couple." Like my friend, they were in their sixties, and like my friend, they were surprised to be viewed as elderly, to have crossed that line.
When are we viewed as elderly? For most of us, I think, it's during our sixties. Long ago cashiers stopped asking for proof that I'm entitled to a senior discount. Nowadays, in a context like that, when age is salient, I'm not surprised to be viewed as old. But even now I'm sometimes startled when young people, both male and female, offer me their seat on buses and subways. When I board a subway car or bus I'm not thinking of myself as old. I'm not thinking of myself as any particular age, until a young person's kind gesture reminds me that yes, I'm an old man. It's a sensation akin to coming across my reflection unexpectedly. "Who's that old man?" I ask myself, only to realize a split second later that it's me.
In Jenny Joseph's poem, "Warning - When I'm an Old Woman I shall Wear Purple," the poet claims that when she's old she's going to make up for the carefulness of her youth. When she's old, she's going to spend her pension "on brandy and summer gloves / and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter." She'll sit on the pavement if she feels like it and engage in all sorts of other outrageous behaviors. But I'll bet that she doesn't fulfill her vow. Like the rest of us, she'll probably continue to go about her business unconscious of her age, until momentarily reminded by the young that she is old.
Elaine Yaffe, in the first of her August posts (www.botholderandwiser.blogspot.com), writes about crossing not one line but several as she's gone from youth to matron to a person no longer strong enough to sit in a seat next to an aircraft emergency exit. Having crossed each of these lines was a surprise to her, just as my sister and her husband and my friend on the plane to Hong Kong were surprised to be seen as elderly. These lines are invisible, as Elaine says, but when we cross them they're invisible only to us.
At about the same time, my sister and her husband became lost while hiking in an Hawaiian forest with friends, with whom they had become separated. Eventually they reoriented themselves and found their way back, only to learn that their friends had reported them lost and that a missing persons alert had been broadcast describing them as an "elderly couple." Like my friend, they were in their sixties, and like my friend, they were surprised to be viewed as elderly, to have crossed that line.
When are we viewed as elderly? For most of us, I think, it's during our sixties. Long ago cashiers stopped asking for proof that I'm entitled to a senior discount. Nowadays, in a context like that, when age is salient, I'm not surprised to be viewed as old. But even now I'm sometimes startled when young people, both male and female, offer me their seat on buses and subways. When I board a subway car or bus I'm not thinking of myself as old. I'm not thinking of myself as any particular age, until a young person's kind gesture reminds me that yes, I'm an old man. It's a sensation akin to coming across my reflection unexpectedly. "Who's that old man?" I ask myself, only to realize a split second later that it's me.
In Jenny Joseph's poem, "Warning - When I'm an Old Woman I shall Wear Purple," the poet claims that when she's old she's going to make up for the carefulness of her youth. When she's old, she's going to spend her pension "on brandy and summer gloves / and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter." She'll sit on the pavement if she feels like it and engage in all sorts of other outrageous behaviors. But I'll bet that she doesn't fulfill her vow. Like the rest of us, she'll probably continue to go about her business unconscious of her age, until momentarily reminded by the young that she is old.
Elaine Yaffe, in the first of her August posts (www.botholderandwiser.blogspot.com), writes about crossing not one line but several as she's gone from youth to matron to a person no longer strong enough to sit in a seat next to an aircraft emergency exit. Having crossed each of these lines was a surprise to her, just as my sister and her husband and my friend on the plane to Hong Kong were surprised to be seen as elderly. These lines are invisible, as Elaine says, but when we cross them they're invisible only to us.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
"Young Man"
My friend Elaine Yaffe, in a post last month (www.botholderandwiser.blogspot.com), railed against being called "young lady." She's on a mission, she wrote, to eliminate the word "young" from greetings to people with white hair, wrinkled faces, and drooping eye lids. "What can I do for you, young lady?" "Come right in, young lady." "Is there anything else I can get you, young lady?" You get the idea. She finds such greetings both condescending and insulting.
"I don't feel that way," I said to myself, when I read her blog. But I didn't tell her that. Instead, I suggested that the next time someone addresses her as "young lady," she should respond, "if I look like this now, what will I look like when I'm old?" But last week, when a friend and I walked into an old-fashioned kosher delicatessen and the counterman greeted me with "how are you, young man?" it bothered me. My friend and I weren't standing at the counter waiting to be served; we had been walking to the back of the restaurant in order to find a table, so there was no reason for the counterman to address me. I was so miffed that I forgot the snappy comeback I had suggested to Elaine and instead mumbled, "uh, not bad for an old man." Elaine, I apologize.
Normally the person who greets you as "young man" is not only substantially older, he is also of at least equivalent social status. A 60-year-old salesclerk at, say, Brooks Brothers, was unlikely to have addressed me, when I was 25, as "young man." He would have called me "sir." In contrast, the counterman, who appeared to be in his fifties, is not only younger than I am, he is also presumably of lower social status, so his addressing me as "young man" was doubly inappropriate. He felt that my age gave him the right to a familiarity that was unearned.
Elaine wrote that when speakers call her "young lady," they are treating old people as if they are children, as if they must be spoken to in very loud voices and very simple sentences. The assumption is that as our bodies are becoming increasingly fragile, our minds are too. There is perhaps a complementary explanation. When the counterman addressed me as "young man," he was treating me as if I were a child in terms of social status. Social status - generally defined in terms of income, occupation, and education- are all adult attributes. Children have no social status of their own, so that if I were to meet, for example, Sasha and Malia Obama, I would not address either of them as "Miss Obama." I would address them by their first names, whereas I would address their parents as "Mr. President" and "Mrs. Obama."
So when the counterman addressed me as "young man," he was ignoring our relative statuses, making them irrelevant. Perhaps Elaine is right, that the elderly are viewed as on their way to second childhood. Is that what the counterman saw in me? Or was he placing me beyond social status, to be viewed for my essential, naked self, as a man who puts on his pants one leg at a time? Alternatively, perhaps his overriding our differences in social status was a veiled expression of hostility towards someone more privileged, which he felt free to make because my age made me an nonthreatening target. Whatever the reason, I was not pleased. I'm sorry to say that I want my social status, if not acknowledged, then at least not negated.
And - here the guilty truth is forced to emerge - my displeasure was increased by the fact that my friend, although only a six or so years younger than I am, sailed past the counterman without eliciting "young man." But my friend carries himself with great panache. Perhaps I should ask him for lessons.
"I don't feel that way," I said to myself, when I read her blog. But I didn't tell her that. Instead, I suggested that the next time someone addresses her as "young lady," she should respond, "if I look like this now, what will I look like when I'm old?" But last week, when a friend and I walked into an old-fashioned kosher delicatessen and the counterman greeted me with "how are you, young man?" it bothered me. My friend and I weren't standing at the counter waiting to be served; we had been walking to the back of the restaurant in order to find a table, so there was no reason for the counterman to address me. I was so miffed that I forgot the snappy comeback I had suggested to Elaine and instead mumbled, "uh, not bad for an old man." Elaine, I apologize.
Normally the person who greets you as "young man" is not only substantially older, he is also of at least equivalent social status. A 60-year-old salesclerk at, say, Brooks Brothers, was unlikely to have addressed me, when I was 25, as "young man." He would have called me "sir." In contrast, the counterman, who appeared to be in his fifties, is not only younger than I am, he is also presumably of lower social status, so his addressing me as "young man" was doubly inappropriate. He felt that my age gave him the right to a familiarity that was unearned.
Elaine wrote that when speakers call her "young lady," they are treating old people as if they are children, as if they must be spoken to in very loud voices and very simple sentences. The assumption is that as our bodies are becoming increasingly fragile, our minds are too. There is perhaps a complementary explanation. When the counterman addressed me as "young man," he was treating me as if I were a child in terms of social status. Social status - generally defined in terms of income, occupation, and education- are all adult attributes. Children have no social status of their own, so that if I were to meet, for example, Sasha and Malia Obama, I would not address either of them as "Miss Obama." I would address them by their first names, whereas I would address their parents as "Mr. President" and "Mrs. Obama."
So when the counterman addressed me as "young man," he was ignoring our relative statuses, making them irrelevant. Perhaps Elaine is right, that the elderly are viewed as on their way to second childhood. Is that what the counterman saw in me? Or was he placing me beyond social status, to be viewed for my essential, naked self, as a man who puts on his pants one leg at a time? Alternatively, perhaps his overriding our differences in social status was a veiled expression of hostility towards someone more privileged, which he felt free to make because my age made me an nonthreatening target. Whatever the reason, I was not pleased. I'm sorry to say that I want my social status, if not acknowledged, then at least not negated.
And - here the guilty truth is forced to emerge - my displeasure was increased by the fact that my friend, although only a six or so years younger than I am, sailed past the counterman without eliciting "young man." But my friend carries himself with great panache. Perhaps I should ask him for lessons.
Monday, September 6, 2010
A Series on Life and Death
My daughter, a palliative care social worker, recently sent me an announcement for "a reflective nine month series on life and death at The Continuum Center for Health and Healing." Its purpose is to help participants "explore and befriend their fears of death."
When I was a child and told my mother I was afraid of dying, she asked me if I remembered what it was like before I was born. "No," I said. "Well," she said, "that's what it's like after you die." That was the right thing to say - right because it's true and right because it stilled my fears. Of course, for all I know, a pit in hell is being dug for me right now, but I believe that after death we will experience nothing, just as we experienced nothing before we were born. If I believed in hell, I would tremble in the face of death, but from what I've seen, the hell that exists is right here on earth.
I don't fear death, but I suppose I should fear dying, which can be a wretched affair. "If this is dying," Lytton Strachey said on his deathbed, "I don't think much of it." But it's useless to worry about dying. I've done the best I can, having written advance directives and appointed health care proxies who know my wishes. I'll let them worry.
My emotion is regret, not fear. I hate to say goodbye to the clink of fruit juice glasses as my wife and I toast each other at breakfast. I hate to bid farewell to walking in Prospect Park, to crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, to lunches with friends, to family dinners, to the memory of vanilla ice cream coated with caramel sauce, to reading the novels of Trollope one more time, to conversations with my children, to the crunch of autumn leaves under foot, and to a whispered "I love you," at the end of day. I sympathize with Madame du Barry's anguished last words. After being dragged, terrified, to the guillotine, she called out, "one minute more, Mr. Executioner, I beg you!" When Emily's ghost returns to the graveyard, in "Our Town," she asks the Stage Manager, does anyone ever realize life while they live..every, every minute? If you do realize even a small part of it, how can you bear to say goodbye?
Life would be intolerable if it were infinitely long, and it's the knowledge of death that makes life precious. Even so, the nine month series on life and death is unlikely to help me accept without regret the inevitable loss of everything I hold dear. Perhaps my daughter will think of something else.
When I was a child and told my mother I was afraid of dying, she asked me if I remembered what it was like before I was born. "No," I said. "Well," she said, "that's what it's like after you die." That was the right thing to say - right because it's true and right because it stilled my fears. Of course, for all I know, a pit in hell is being dug for me right now, but I believe that after death we will experience nothing, just as we experienced nothing before we were born. If I believed in hell, I would tremble in the face of death, but from what I've seen, the hell that exists is right here on earth.
I don't fear death, but I suppose I should fear dying, which can be a wretched affair. "If this is dying," Lytton Strachey said on his deathbed, "I don't think much of it." But it's useless to worry about dying. I've done the best I can, having written advance directives and appointed health care proxies who know my wishes. I'll let them worry.
My emotion is regret, not fear. I hate to say goodbye to the clink of fruit juice glasses as my wife and I toast each other at breakfast. I hate to bid farewell to walking in Prospect Park, to crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, to lunches with friends, to family dinners, to the memory of vanilla ice cream coated with caramel sauce, to reading the novels of Trollope one more time, to conversations with my children, to the crunch of autumn leaves under foot, and to a whispered "I love you," at the end of day. I sympathize with Madame du Barry's anguished last words. After being dragged, terrified, to the guillotine, she called out, "one minute more, Mr. Executioner, I beg you!" When Emily's ghost returns to the graveyard, in "Our Town," she asks the Stage Manager, does anyone ever realize life while they live..every, every minute? If you do realize even a small part of it, how can you bear to say goodbye?
Life would be intolerable if it were infinitely long, and it's the knowledge of death that makes life precious. Even so, the nine month series on life and death is unlikely to help me accept without regret the inevitable loss of everything I hold dear. Perhaps my daughter will think of something else.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Cousins
It's become a tradition for my maternal first cousins to meet once every three months for dinner, along with our spouses and sometimes our children, on the evening preceding the board meeting of a family foundation. Because my wife and I lived abroad when this tradition was being formed, and because the dinners are held in Boston, whereas we live in New York, my wife and I have attended relatively few of these dinners. But recently, we went up to Boston to dine with my cousins.
We did so because an unusually large number of cousins would be attending the dinner in honor of my sister and her husband, who would be celebrating their 51st wedding anniversary the next day. The foundation will expire next year and it's not at all clear that the tradition of cousin dinners will continue after that. Who knows how many more chances I'll have to see that number of cousins again? So although we had just come back from a long weekend on Cape Cod, we went yet again to Massachusetts. It was there that I realized, to my considerable surprise, how much I enjoy being with my cousins, how warm is my feeling for them, and how precious I find my connection with each of them.
I was surprised because we are a heterogeneous lot, and if we met one another as strangers, at a party, for example, or in the next seat on a transcontinental flight, we might engage in a pleasant conversation, but I wonder how many of my cousins would ask for my e-mail address. Our personalities and interests are different enough that it's unlikely many of them would do so.
But we share our childhoods, and that makes all the difference. My parents summered with my mother's sisters either in the same large house or in nearby houses, when we were children, and during the rest of the year, we children were often in each other's homes, all but one of which were within a fifteen minute walk of one another. When I heard that one of my cousins, who was not at the meeting, was seriously ill, I felt a rush of concern for him, although I've seldom seen him since I left home. But that didn't matter: he is only a few months younger than I am, and we played together as children. The age difference between my younger cousins and me meant that they were never my playmates, but nonetheless I met them often at family dinners, particularly at Thanksgiving and Passover. They were part of my childhood too.
Many of my cousins have retained their Boston accents. When I hear them speak, I'm transported to a time long past, and I can almost believe that my parents and my uncles and aunts are in the next room, at their own dinner party, one for the grown-ups, a party from which we children have been excluded. Who says one can't go home again?
We did so because an unusually large number of cousins would be attending the dinner in honor of my sister and her husband, who would be celebrating their 51st wedding anniversary the next day. The foundation will expire next year and it's not at all clear that the tradition of cousin dinners will continue after that. Who knows how many more chances I'll have to see that number of cousins again? So although we had just come back from a long weekend on Cape Cod, we went yet again to Massachusetts. It was there that I realized, to my considerable surprise, how much I enjoy being with my cousins, how warm is my feeling for them, and how precious I find my connection with each of them.
I was surprised because we are a heterogeneous lot, and if we met one another as strangers, at a party, for example, or in the next seat on a transcontinental flight, we might engage in a pleasant conversation, but I wonder how many of my cousins would ask for my e-mail address. Our personalities and interests are different enough that it's unlikely many of them would do so.
But we share our childhoods, and that makes all the difference. My parents summered with my mother's sisters either in the same large house or in nearby houses, when we were children, and during the rest of the year, we children were often in each other's homes, all but one of which were within a fifteen minute walk of one another. When I heard that one of my cousins, who was not at the meeting, was seriously ill, I felt a rush of concern for him, although I've seldom seen him since I left home. But that didn't matter: he is only a few months younger than I am, and we played together as children. The age difference between my younger cousins and me meant that they were never my playmates, but nonetheless I met them often at family dinners, particularly at Thanksgiving and Passover. They were part of my childhood too.
Many of my cousins have retained their Boston accents. When I hear them speak, I'm transported to a time long past, and I can almost believe that my parents and my uncles and aunts are in the next room, at their own dinner party, one for the grown-ups, a party from which we children have been excluded. Who says one can't go home again?
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Time
Time, time, what is time? asks the criminal played by Peter Lorre in the 1953 cult film, "Beat the Devil." The Swiss manufacture it, the French hoard it, the Italians squander it, the Americans say it is money, and the Hindus say it doesn't exist. As he rattles these off, he counts them on his fingers. You know what I say? I say time's a crook. I thought of this sequence the other day during a trustees' meeting of a charitable foundation.
My grandfather's will established the foundation, which went into effect when he died forty-nine years ago. Under the rules of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which administers his will, the foundation must expire next year, fifty years after he died. So the meeting was devoted to discussing the foundation's final grants and endowments.
I was twenty-nine in 1961 when my grandfather died. At the time, 50 years seemed impossibly far away. But in retrospect, that time has passed quickly. Since 1961, I established a career in a field of which I had never heard and lived for half a lifetime in Israel, of which I knew little and cared about less. I married, raised children, and saw them in their turn marry and begin to raise their own children. I've seen the generations of my grandparents and my parents die, and long ago I started to see my own peers die.
Just as 2011 seemed impossibly far away in 1961, so does 2061 today. My generation will have died out long before then and my grandchildren will be in their fifties and sixties. Life is a dream, my grandfather used to tell me, on our walks together when I was a boy. I thought I understood what he meant: life passes quickly. But it is only now, when I'm older than he was at the time we walked together, that I fully understand what he was trying to tell me: life is short, don't waste it.
Unlike the Swiss, I can't manufacture more time, nor can I hoard it like the French. I've tried not to squander it, although I've not always been successful in that endeavor, and if time is money, I don't have much to show for it. Unlike the Hindus, I believe that time exists and that I won't have another chance to spend it. But do I agree with the character played by Peter Lorre when he said that life's a crook. It fools you into thinking, when you're young, that it will stay with you forever, but by the time you've grown old, you've found that it has stolen away, without your ever having noticed.
My grandfather's will established the foundation, which went into effect when he died forty-nine years ago. Under the rules of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which administers his will, the foundation must expire next year, fifty years after he died. So the meeting was devoted to discussing the foundation's final grants and endowments.
I was twenty-nine in 1961 when my grandfather died. At the time, 50 years seemed impossibly far away. But in retrospect, that time has passed quickly. Since 1961, I established a career in a field of which I had never heard and lived for half a lifetime in Israel, of which I knew little and cared about less. I married, raised children, and saw them in their turn marry and begin to raise their own children. I've seen the generations of my grandparents and my parents die, and long ago I started to see my own peers die.
Just as 2011 seemed impossibly far away in 1961, so does 2061 today. My generation will have died out long before then and my grandchildren will be in their fifties and sixties. Life is a dream, my grandfather used to tell me, on our walks together when I was a boy. I thought I understood what he meant: life passes quickly. But it is only now, when I'm older than he was at the time we walked together, that I fully understand what he was trying to tell me: life is short, don't waste it.
Unlike the Swiss, I can't manufacture more time, nor can I hoard it like the French. I've tried not to squander it, although I've not always been successful in that endeavor, and if time is money, I don't have much to show for it. Unlike the Hindus, I believe that time exists and that I won't have another chance to spend it. But do I agree with the character played by Peter Lorre when he said that life's a crook. It fools you into thinking, when you're young, that it will stay with you forever, but by the time you've grown old, you've found that it has stolen away, without your ever having noticed.
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