The Geezer Bandit

Sunday morning, when I turned on the radio, I learned that on the day before, the “Geezer Bandit” had struck again. This elderly man, wearing a blazer, dark pants, and baseball hat, typically presents a note to a bank teller demanding money, revealing a gun as he does so. Saturday’s heist was his thirteenth, in a string of southern California bank robberies that began in 2009, ten of them in San Diego County. The FBI and several banks have offered a reward of $20,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

My reaction upon hearing this news - it was the first I had heard of him – was admiration, and before I could be ashamed of this response, I learned that the authorities speculate he might not be old at all. Perhaps the bandit is impersonating an old man, disguising himself to throw off the police. I was disappointed. I want him to be old. And if he is, I hope he gets away with it. When I told my wife of my reaction, she was appalled.

I wouldn't admire a young bank robber. He's simply a criminal working at a young man's game. The Geezer Bandit, in contrast, is more than a criminal. He's transgressing not only the law but also convention. He's defying the constraints of his age. Still, I don't admire Hugh Hefner's engagement to a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. Nor do I admire the 85-year-old Californian, recently caught at the Mexican border with 35 packages of marijuana in the trunk of his car.

The Geezer Bandit's exploits, unlike Hefner's engagement or the old-timer's smuggling, display exceptional boldness and daring. If these traits are useful for robbing banks, they are at least as useful for confronting old age. We geezers need plenty of courage for successfully meeting that challenge, and we, unlike the Bandit, can do so without fear of the police.

Complete Peace

On Saturday evening, my sister-in-law stumbled on a cobblestone, fell flat on her face, and broke both her shoulders. In great pain, she’s now confined to what amounts to a straitjacket, unable to move her arms or her hands, and reduced to a state of utter dependency. In addition to her constant pain, she faces considerable boredom, since she’s unable even to hold a book. And obviously she cannot continue her work as an artist. This last may be the greatest burden of all. The initial prognosis predicts six months before she has fully regained the functions she has lost.

A vibrant, vivacious, beautiful woman, she had gone with my brother and another couple to Washington, where they intended to visit art galleries and museums for a long-anticipated holiday. On the evening of the second day, she fell. Her sudden calamity illustrates a maxim that I often cite: the next catastrophe is usually unexpected, or, in plain English, you don’t know where it’s coming from.

Years ago, while vacationing on an Aegean island, I read about a middle-aged man who, on a cloudless summer morning, left his home in Athens to go to work. He walked to a bus stop and there he stood waiting. Before his bus could arrive, an automobile, wildly out of control, mounted the sidewalk, crashed into the bus stop, and killed him instantly.

I was sitting on my hotel balcony facing the blue-green ocean when I read of that incident. The beauty of the panorama suddenly dimmed as I thought of an old William Steig cartoon. It pictures a man floating on a rubber tube in a sun-drenched sea. His hands are clasped around his generous middle, his eyes are closed, and he’s smiling happily, as the sun shines down upon him. Beneath him swims an enormous, horrendous sea monster, its mouth open, its teeth long and sharp. The cartoon’s caption is “Complete Peace.”

From time to time it’s salutary to remember that the distance between each of us and disaster is as narrow as a moth’s wing. That’s why my wife and I stand at the open door to watch the other leave our apartment and walk to the elevator. That’s why, when the elevator arrives, we wave to each other goodbye.

How to Learn a Language

When George P. Fletcher was born, his parents, Hungarian immigrants to America, determined to spare him the trauma that his older sister faced when she went out to play with the neighborhood children and found them speaking an unintelligible language, English. Until then, her whole world had been in Hungarian. To shield him from that experience, George’s parents spoke to him only in English.

In his remarkable new book, My Life in Seven Languages: a linguistic memoir (Jerusalem: Mazo Publishers, 2011), he expresses his resentment at his parents’ decision. They not only deprived him of native fluency in an additional language - he would, in any event, have learned English, just as his sister had - but it also cut him off from his family's language of intimacy.

This early deprivation, reinforced by the humiliation and frustration he felt when, as a child, he was unable to communicate with his visiting grandmother, may have formed, he suggests, his passion to learn additional languages. Not counting Italian and Japanese, which he has learned only to a superficial degree, he has mastered six languages: German, Russian, French, Hungarian, Hebrew, and Spanish. He’s learned each of them well enough to establish serious personal relationships in them and to use them at the highest professional level. His competency is far beyond that needed for purposes of tourism or, for that matter, beyond what most American students acquire in foreign-language classes. As his title suggests, he’s lived in each of these languages.

He’s a man of parts. Tango dancer, long-distance cyclist, novelist, and television commentator, he is also Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia University and an internationally recognized authority on comparative criminal law and legal philosophical issues. My Life in Seven Languages describes the contribution made by his multilingualism to his intellectual and professional development. It also takes us behind the scenes of some of the well-known legal cases, foreign and domestic, in which he has participated.

My interest in his book was two-fold. First, I count myself privileged to be his friend, so I was keen to read this intensely personal narrative. Second, I have not lost all concern for my former career as sociologist of language. I wanted to know how he managed to learn all those languages.

He acquired the rudiments of German and Russian in high school and college classes, a good beginning but by no means sufficient for mastery. The other languages he acquired with little if any formal instruction. (He writes of dropping a Berlitz French course in disgust after the third lesson, in which his teacher insisted on imparting the names of French flowers.)

Here are some of his language learning strategies. He makes lists of new words, memorizes them, and uses them whenever he can. He seeks native speakers with whom to converse and talks to them as much as possible. He memorizes sentences and then uses them in various combinations. He initially focuses on vocabulary within a limited field, waiting until he’s absorbed the language’s syntax before trying to expand his lexicon. He forces himself to speak the language even when he knows he's making mistakes. He reads in the target language. In short, he creates and exploits opportunities to use the language. “Typically,” he writes, “I imitated Eliezer ben Yehudah, the man credited with reviving modern Hebrew, by switching to a language and pretending to know no other. This is annoying sometimes to the people who would rather speak English. Sorry, there is no other way to learn a new language.” This may be an overstatement, but there’s no denying his success as a learner.

So, aspiring language learners, you need both the opportunity and the determination to learn. George Fletcher has shown you how to create the former; it’s up to you to provide the latter.

A Respectable Chap

Recently I came across a letter that I had written to our children in the spring of 1998, describing our just-completed four-day archeological tour of Jordan. We were among 38 other participants, all supporters of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, most of us retirees in their seventies.

We spent a full day at the legendary city of Petra. As we were leaving, one of the participants, an old lady, told us that when she was 19, she and three male friends aimed to cross from Israel into Jordan with the intention of seeing the city. This was, of course, not only strictly forbidden but also extremely dangerous. Jordan and Israel were still technically at war. While a few Israeli youngsters succeeded in their quest, others set out to see the pink city and never returned.

The well or spring at which she and her friends had planned to refill their canteens turned out to have been poisoned by the Israelis to prevent Bedouins from crossing into Israel with their flocks. The four had water enough only for one more day. The Jordanian army was near. So they decided to turn back. The old lady told us that she was so reluctant to return than her friends had to physically carry her away. That’s when she knew, she said, what Moses must have felt as he looked at the Promised Land.

She told very few people about her exploit. Eventually, however, her children found out about it, which considerably reduced her moral authority in warning them against the various crazy things that young people often want to do. Now that she had finally visited Petra, she shared her story for the first time with relative strangers. As she did so, her eyes shone.

As I read that account, I thought about the crazy things I did when I was in my ‘teens and early twenties. True, I wouldn’t have been shot by the Jordanian army as an infiltrator had my adventures fizzled, but the consequences could have been dire. The story I told in an earlier blog post about riding on a ferris wheel at an African American fair, held in the segregated Deep South, provides a mild example.

Oh, I was like when a lad! sings the jury in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Trial by Jury,” a shocking young scamp of a rover, I behaved like a regular cad; But that sort of thing is all over. I’m now a respectable chap, and shine with a virtue resplendent, and therefore I haven’t a scrap of sympathy for the defendant! I too am now a respectable chap, but, unlike that chorus, I have plenty of sympathy for the boy I once was. I look at his energy, enthusiasm, and idealism and regret their loss. I won't say that his foolishness has entirely dissipated, but I am a great deal more sensible than he was. I was foolish, yes, but, like the old lady, I was lucky.

Improving the World

“I arise in the morning,” observed E. B. White, “torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” When I came across this playful remark the other day, it reminded me of the question the Emperor Haile Sellassie is said to have asked his grandchildren every evening, “What have you done for Ethiopia today?” If Ethiopia can symbolize the world, I can ask myself the same question. Alas, I’m forced to admit that I spend more time considering how to enjoy the world than how to improve it. In fact, I’ve never hoped to improve the world at all, beyond trying not to make it any worse.

Most of us, myself included, are so preoccupied with getting through the day that we give little thought to how we might make the world a better place. But perhaps it’s just as well. For one thing, it’s hard to be sure what’s an improvement, as the controversy over the health care law demonstrates. For another, our efforts to do good often produce undesirable consequences. It’s been argued, for example, that Israeli organizations such as Rabbis for Human Rights and Machsom Watch, which try to protect the Palestinian population from the abuses of the Occupation, may in fact be helping to perpetuate it. By making the Occupation more tolerable, these organizations may be lessening Palestinian resistance as well as persuading Israelis that the Occupation is, if not benign, at least not so bad. And to take another example, the plethora of NGO’s now operating in Haiti may in fact impede reconstruction because of wasteful duplication of effort and lack of coordination. The position that enabled Haile Sellassie’s grandchildren to do much good also enabled them to do much harm.

But I’m neither a prince nor E. B. White. Beyond recycling, giving to charity, visiting the sick, abstaining from meat, contributing to the political party that best represents my values, and doing my best to be pleasant to others, I don’t see much else I can do that would improve the world. So perhaps I should concentrate on enjoying it instead. That’s a lot easier, at any rate. I’m fortunate in that many of the routine activities of everyday life give me pleasure, from folding the laundry to washing the dishes. Both offer a modest sense of accomplishment and provide, during the performance of those homely tasks, a time for contemplation. I’m lucky in being pleased not only by solitary activities but also by social life, for the company of family and friends has given me much joy. At this stage of my development, I find it as hard to improve the world as it is easy to enjoy it. It is, I suppose, unfeeling to enjoy myself when I’m doing so little to alleviate misery in the world, but I hope that at least I’m not making matters any worse. That too would be a contribution

The Transitional Bridge

Graciela Spector, my last doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote a splendid dissertation about the acquisition of Hebrew and the maintenance of Spanish among Argentinian immigrants to Israel who had arrived as adults. She found that they aim not at perfection in acquiring Hebrew but imperfection. Their Hebrew announces, “I am one of you, but not quite.” They arrest their development in Hebrew at whatever point it seems to them that it is becoming “too good,” a betrayal of their identity as Argentinians. This was an argument with which I could sympathize, since my own Hebrew was in no danger of becoming too good.

Twelve life-stories formed the core of her dissertation, narratives as skillfully rendered as the best fiction. From these she built a theory that included such interesting notions as the Language Casanova (a person who falls in love with language after language, faithless to each in turn), the transitional bridge (along which immigrants station themselves, moving now towards the Israeli side and now towards the Argentinian as their self-perceptions change), and imagined language proficiency (the proficiency which immigrants think is consistent with their place on the transitional bridge).

She wrote about the crises that ensue when immigrants return to Argentina for an extended stay – a sabbatical, for example – which forces them to ask themselves “who am I?” When we were living in Jerusalem, I experienced that crisis every time I returned to America, even for a brief visit. I would fantasize about living there full-time, but when I returned to Jerusalem, I was happy to be back. My transitional bridge saw a lot of traffic.

Now that we live year round in America, I’ve crossed the transitional bridge all the way back to where I began. I continue to take a keen interest in all matters Israeli, checking Ha’aretz on line every day, reading newspaper items about Israel before I turn to other articles, and keeping in touch with Israeli friends. Even so, I’m now planted firmly in America. With my health issues becoming ever more serious and both our children living here, it would make no sense to return to Jerusalem, even if we had the strength to do it. We’ve burned the bridge.

Yet there’s no denying that our lives in Jerusalem were exceptionally rich - involved with others and engaged in the political scene - more so than here. But we're older now and have less stamina. Even if we never left Jerusalem, it’s doubtful that we could continue to entertain on the same scale as we once did, when it was not uncommon for eight guests to join us for Shabbat dinner. I won’t speak for my wife but I know that I could not throw myself into projects with the same vigor that I once displayed.

We gaze at Jerusalem now through a nostalgic haze, forgetful of the frustrations and anxieties that life there often entailed. Yes, our lives there were genuinely rewarding, engaging, and enriching. We were immensely fortunate to have lived there so long. But we remember Jerusalem during a time when we were younger. Our nostalgia is not only for Jerusalem. It is also for our youth.

Drawing Water from the Well

Recently I came across a letter that I had written to our son 14 years ago, in which I told him aboutmy fantasy of living on a freighter. The year before, my wife and I had sailed on a freighter fromOakland to Sydney, and I found it so delightful that I dreamed of living on such a vessel all year round.

Of course, my wife would never have agreed to such a scheme, but in my fantasy she liked the idea. Our imaginary freighter would call at both New York and Los Angeles, so we could periodically visit our children and grandchildren. At each port along the route we would splurge on books and good dining. At sea we would read and write and listen to music and gaze at the sea and the clouds and look for dolphins, whales, albatross, and flying fish And when we tired of that, we could converse with the other passengers or watch a DVD. We could say goodbye to cooking and cleaning and other household chores, since these would all be performed by the crew.

Note that I did not fantasize about sailing on my own yacht with its own crew. Even fantasies have their limits. While I could imagine living on a freighter, I could not imagine being rich enough to own and maintain an oceangoing yacht. On the other hand, that would have been far more likely than my wife’s ever agreeing to live on one.

As I read the letter, I realized how much I have changed in the past 14 years. First of all, there are too many things wrong with me now to be out of easy range of a doctor, to say nothing of a hospital emergency room. (Passenger-carrying freighters usually carry no more than twelve passengers, the limit permitted without a doctor on board.) Several years ago I read about a woman who sold her apartment in New York and booked a permanent berth on one of the Cunard Queens. Such cruise liners do have doctors on board. But I wouldn’t want that either.

Living on a vessel would be a retreat from every day life, and it’s the pleasures and routines of ordinary life that I want to seize today, squeezing as much from it as possible. Forgive me, dear reader, for mentioning Our Town again and the question that Emily Webb’s ghost asks the Town Manager: Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute? And he replies that maybe poets and saints do. Even though I'm neither, perhaps I can learn how to do it.

And I need to learn. When I’m washing the dishes, for example, do I appreciate the feel of the warm water on my hands, the fragile beauty of the soap suds, the sound of the rushing water? No. At least not always or even mostly. Mostly I don’t notice these sensations at all, but they will be utterly gone once I’m dead. (Indeed some of them may go before that.) Usually I perform such everyday routines automatically, without much thought. It requires practice to live intensely in the moment.

A simple Tibetan woman once asked a monk to tell her the essence of his practice. “Concentrate on your hands,” he told her, “as you draw water from the well.” So far, I haven’t found it easy to follow his advice, but since the moment is all I have, I want to do the best I can.

Order and Nostalgia

“Abandon all nostalgia” heads part of an article in last Sunday Times. It’s about Barbara Reich (rhymes with quiche), a professional organizer. She’s booked three weeks in advance and when she comes to you she’ll charge you $150 an hour to make you throw stuff away. Among the items that she browbeats her clients into tossing are samples of their children’s earliest writing (“Everybody’s going to learn to read and write. You don’t need the evidence.”), baby toys kept in case someone with an infant comes to visit (“You’re not running a day-care center.”), and a checkers set with only black pieces, a gift from a relative (“She won’t love you any less.”) In the words of one of her enthusiastic clients, “if you’re nostalgic in any way, you’re probably in trouble with Barbara.”

Nostalgia and clutter have been on my mind these days because in about a month we’re scheduled to empty our apartment in order to renovate it. In the process of preparing our household goods to be put into storage, we’re confronted with items that should be thrown away. Why am I keeping that old-fashioned cell phone that I used in Jerusalem? Why am I filing bank and credit card statements when these are available on line for the past seven years?

We went through a more serious process of deaccessioning when we sold our apartment in Jerusalem, where we had accumulated stuff for 32 years. I think I persuaded my wife to throw away our children's primary school drawings, and I forced myself to give away lots of clothes that I hadn't worn for years. But I kept many items of purely sentimental value, for it was hard to say goodbye to them. And now that it's time to winnow our belongings once again, I find myself with the same difficulty. If we could afford her services now, I probably would be in trouble with Barbara.

Right now I’m staring at a crude necklace of thin glass disks, cobalt blue, strung on many soft, thin cotton strands. A little tin bell hangs from it. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopian toddlers wear them, or at least they did when we lived there more than 40 years ago. When a child moved, the bell tinkled, so perhaps it helped parents keep track of children. Perhaps the blue color kept away the evil eye. Whatever the origin of these necklaces, we thought them exotic, so we bought one in the Merkato, the city’s great outdoor market. When we moved into our Jerusalem apartment, I hung it on the doorknob of my study, where it remained for 32 years. Now it hangs on the doorknob of my study here. But it’s neither beautiful nor valuable. It’s just one more component of our apartment’s clutter. Shouldn’t I throw it away at last?

“How can you do that?” asked my wife, when I proposed disposing of the necklace. “Every time you look at it you remember Ethiopia.” That’s true, but I have other means of remembrance – photographs and paintings, a piece of pottery that has miraculously survived, a book with my name on it. “What's a home?” she continued. “Isn’t it a place of sentiment, of memory? Do you want our home to look like a nondescript hotel room?”

I really didn’t need much persuasion. After all, the blue necklace takes up little space, even on the doorknob’s neck. And Ethiopia is not the only place and time it evokes. It also reminds me of our life in Jerusalem, where it was a mute witness to the work of more than 30 years. And now it watches over me as I write this post. My wife is right. Order and lack of clutter are important, but so is sentiment. The trick is to find a happy medium between the two.

Comforting the Demented

For the past ten years or so I’ve kept what I call a “120 file.” It contains materials such as copies of our wills, advanced directives, health care proxies, and the mechanics of dealing with our various accounts. I update it at least once a year, all of which is to make my wife’s life easier when, as it likely, I check out before she does.

Recently we’ve been joking that each of us should add a new item to the file, instructions to our successors – mine to my wife’s new husband, hers to my new wife, should either of us remarry after bereavement. Neither of us can imagine living with another partner, accommodating ourselves to a new set of crotchets and idiosyncrasies, but it’s hard to live alone, and if one of us should remarry, wouldn’t the new spouse welcome advance knowledge? Why learn the hard way? My new wife, for example, should know that when I’m hungry, particularly during that poisonous hour before dinner, I feel that the world is coming to an end. She shouldn’t think that she’s done anything to provoke my gloom. All she should do is remind me to eat something, and if that fails, to pop something into my mouth.

Now an additional list is suggested by a recent article in the Times, “The vanishing mind: giving Alzheimer’s patients their way, even chocolate.” It reports the award-winning program for demented patients at the Beatitudes nursing home in Phoenix, where the emphasis is placed on the patient’s comfort.

Patients are allowed to eat what they want, no matter how unhealthy the food, and whenever they want, even at two in the morning. One patient is soothed by a life-like baby doll that she carries with her all day. "Demented patients at Beatitudes are allowed practically anything that brings comfort, even an alcoholic ‘nip at night,’ said Tena Alonzo, director of research. ‘Whatever your vice is, we’re your folks,’ she said.” Interventions such as these are effective in alleviating patient discomfort and disorientation, diminishing emotional distress and behavioral problems.

This article, then, suggests another document for my “120 file,” interventions that are likely to give me comfort should I become demented. Visits from those I love would of course be at the top of the list, if I still recognize them. Recordings of Bach and Mozart would be helpful, as would unlimited amounts of vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce. One advantage of dementia is that the second dessert would taste as good as the first, which is likely to have been forgotten as soon as it is eaten. I’ve always enjoyed caring for plants and arranging flowers, and perhaps those skills would still be left to me and could be enlisted. Funny movies have been found to improve demented patients’ moods, so I’d like to view that scene in When Harry Met Sally, in which a customer at a diner, watching a young woman simulate an orgasm in the a nearby booth, tells the waitress, “I’ll have what she’s having.” With dementia, I could watch it over and over again. If it’s not impractical, the provision of a lapdog that I could pat during the day would help, but perhaps a stuffed animal would do as well. I like watching tropical fish, and if demented I could probably watch them for hours at a time.

Of course I can’t know if any of these ideas would work, but it can’t hurt to produce as long a list as I can. It’s always good to be prepared.

Hors de Combat

My friend Batya Reckson sent me a link to a short video recorded by Joseph Campbell almost 30 years ago. It's called “Myth as a Mirror for Ego” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgOUxICCHoA&feature=channel). Campbell (1904-1987) was an influential writer and lecturer in comparative mythology and comparative religion. When I read his biographical entry in the invaluable Wikipedia, I was embarrassed that I had never heard of him, as if I had been living in a cave all these years. But thanks to Batya, I’ve come across him at the right time.

In “Myth as a Mirror for Ego,” Campbell tells us that myths create a mirror for us, a mirror with a schedule on it that shows us where we should be at any stage of life, based on age-old patterns from infancy to old age. A 40-year-old man who wonders if his mother will punish him, for example, “has not moved on” according to Campbell. At that age a forty-year old should be a free, independent, and responsible person, who acts with qualities of a “noble heart.” Similarly, an 80-year-old who wonders about his golf score has not moved on.

Campbell, who was one month shy of his 79^th birthday when he recorded this mini-lecture – just a few months younger than I am now – says that an old person must realize that “I’m not participating in the achievement of life. I have achieved it.” Yet I have friends and colleagues in their late seventies and early eighties, now viewed by younger practitioners as Grand Old Men and Women, who continue to lecture and publish, as engaged in their work as ever. This does not mean that they have not “moved on,” in line with what Campbell calls the “patterned mirror” offered by myth. They are simply doing what they love to do and doing it for its own sake and not for the sake of their careers. Indeed, Campbell himself continued his professional work well into old age.

But it’s been hard for me to watch achievement wave goodbye. For the past 45 years I've worked on one project after another, but no more. Only recently have I put aside the manuscript on which I’d been working for several years. I’d been unable to make it jell, at least not as a trade book. Had I enjoyed the work more I would have continued with it, but whatever enthusiasm I had for the project - and it was never great to begin with - waned over time, until I was simply going through the motions. Still, I felt bad that I was hors de combat, so to speak, no longer in the game.

Campbell’s little talk made me realize that at my stage of life it’s appropriate not to be working towards a goal, not to be oriented towards the future. It was reassuring to hear him say “it’s a wonderful moment that comes when you realize I’m not striving for anything, and what I’m doing now is not a means for achieving something later.” After a certain age, Campbell says, there is no future and suddenly the present becomes rich, valuable for itself.

I will do my best then to appreciate the present, to live in the moment for its own sake. That’s all there is, after all. The past is gone, the future is uncertain, but the present is here right now, in all its vibrant immediacy. Everyday routines – breakfast with my wife, morning coffee with the newspaper, chatting with friends at a café, a phone call from my children, even putting out the trash – are precious. That’s what the ghost of Our Town’s Emily Webb missed and desperately wanted back. That’s what I’ll try to capture now, while I still can.

Young, Single, and Lost

“Are you allergic to dogs?” An attractive young woman was asking me this question on our recent flight from Los Angeles to New York. She was sitting on my left, next to the window. My wife and I had been unable to secure seats next to one another, so we both were occupying a middle seat, one on each side of the aisle. When I told the young woman that I’m not allergic to dogs, she said she was glad, because she didn’t want me to break out in hives. She pointed to the small carrying case at her feet, saying that it contained her small dog.

We quickly embarked on a lively conversation. She’s a lawyer who works for a big multinational firm that merged a few years ago with the smaller company for which she had worked. Seventy per cent of the lawyers from her former firm lost their jobs, so she must be good at her what she does. She likes the work but not the fact that she’s employed by a soulless corporation. She’d work for a non-profit if it would pay her bills. She feels she's not doing anyone any good.

After a few minutes, it became clear that she was drunk, even though her diction was as crisp as that of a sober person. She told me that she was 32 and still single. She asked me how she could find love. I told her that it was a matter of luck and being open. “Being open,” she repeated, as though my answer was profound. She asked me if I’m married, my lost wedding ring having given her no clue to my status. When I told her that my wife was sitting on the other side of the aisle, my companion said she would ask the young man on my right, in the aisle seat, to change places with my wife. The young man was at least six and a half feet tall. It was all I could do to persuade her that it would not be fair to ask him to make the exchange.

“Are you in love?” she then asked me, perhaps figuring that I might not be in love if I wasn’t willing to ask the huge man on my right to squeeze into a middle seat so that my wife and I could sit together. She was surprised when I told her that I was not in love with my wife. “I love my wife,” I said, “but being in love and loving are different.” When you’re in love, I explained, you’re thinking mainly of yourself. When you love, you think mainly of the other person.

“Well,” she then asked me, patting my arm, “if a beautiful woman offered herself to you, would you sleep with her, if your wife would never know?” I thought of “City Slickers,” the 1991 film in which the character played by Billy Crystal is asked a similar question about sleeping with a woman from Venus, who would arrive in a space ship and then leave in an hour. He said no, he wouldn’t sleep with her because although nobody would know, he would know.

The absurdity of the situation didn’t escape me. My companion was treating me like a man a third my age. It would have been flattering had she not been drunk. She acted like a person with dementia, asking me where I lived, what I was doing in Los Angeles, and so forth, over and over again. When I told her I had lived in Israel, she asked if I knew her Jewish psychiatrist, whose name she gave me “No,” I said, “there are a lot of Jews in New York, too many to know them all.” She soon fell asleep, her right knee upraised, making it impossible for me to lower my seat-back tray without disturbing her. When she awoke near the end of the flight, she acted as if she had never said a word to me. And I thanked whatever gods might be that I was no longer young, single and lost.

Grandchildren and Other Delusions

Our recent stay with our son and his family prompted me to reflect on the satisfaction that my grandchildren give me. I used to think that it stemmed from the knowledge that through them I would pass on something of myself, that I would cheat death through my grandchildren and their descendants. But what would I be I passing on?

My surname is not likely to survive indefinitely. There may come a time when only daughters are born and their children will take the surnames of their fathers. In any case, surnames are relatively recent. Until modern times, most people were called something like Abraham the son of Moshe and Moshe's daughter was called Miriam the daughter of Moshe. This is still the style in many parts of the world, as in Iceland, among Christians in Ethiopia and Christians in the Indian state of Kerala, and among Jews when they are called to the Torah. So even if my surname persists for a few more generations, it’s of little importance.

But what about my genes? Won’t these be perpetuated? Yes, for a while anyway, as long as my descendants manage to procreate. But in what sense are my genes really mine? Haven’t I simply inherited them? Haven’t I simply dispersed the genes my ancestors transmitted to me? There’s nothing personal about them.

Yes, but what about my influence on my children? Surely this will be reflected in future generations, for better and for worse. But even if my influence on my grandchildren passed unmediated by my children, my influence would be diluted by those imparted by their three other grandparents. After ten generations, my descendants would probably be no more related to me than to anyone else in the general population and whatever influence I had would be nil.

So I can’t say that I’d be passing on anything of significance of myself through my grandchildren. I think that the pleasure they give me is the knowledge that my children are raising them successfully. As much as I love my grandchildren, as much as I delight in watching their development, and as much as I’m curious to know what kind of adults they will become, I’m even more invested in my own children, even more concerned about them, even more interested in their lives.

I won’t say that you have to have children in order to find maximal satisfaction in your passage through life. There are many sources of such satisfaction, in work, in love, in friendship, and in public service. Certainly children are the source of much pain as well as much pleasure. But when I compare the sense of satisfaction that my children give me to that imparted by the books and articles I’ve published, the students I’ve directed, the classes I’ve taught, the friendships I’ve established – all sources of considerable gratification – I’d say that my role as father, imperfect though it’s been, has given me the most profound sense of accomplishment. Grandchildren are all very well, but their parents are the primary focus of my concern.

Christmas

This year we spent Christmas in Los Angeles, where we were visiting our son and his family. For someone reared in the Northeast, the sight of Christmas lights in the vicinity of palm trees seemed bizarre, although Los Angeles resembles Bethlehem, from the point of view of climate and foliage, far more than does Boston, where I grew up. Bizarre or not, the Christmas decorations in Los Angeles had the same meaning for me as they had in Boston: “these lights are not for you.” Increasingly during the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas and culminating in the holiday itself, I feel slightly alienated from the American mainstream, a period in which I feel American, but not quite.

Our son’s response, when I told him of my estrangement from Christmas, was that the holiday is largely a commercial one, empty of religious content. Maybe he’s right. Certainly many Christian clerics deplore the holiday’s commercial emphasis. But America is one of the most religious countries in the world and a majority of our fellow citizens believe that Jesus is the Messiah, God in earthly form, and even if they don’t go to church on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, the symbols of the holiday are meaningful to them, for they represent their tradition.

But for me, each Christmas jingle and carol, each Christmas-themed advertisement, each suburban home decorated with colored lights, reminds me that Christmas is a Big Deal for almost everyone but me. When we lived in Jerusalem, I appreciated the escape from Christmas.

I asked my wife at breakfast if she feels as I do. Not at all, she said, for she grew up observing Christmas, when she and her family decorated a tree and exchanged presents. For her, Christmas is not an alien tradition. Indeed, I remember helping trim a tree at her grandmother’s house, using decorations that seemed to me to be at least a half a century old. At her grandmother's Christmas dinner, a cardboard chimney painted to look like brick served as the table’s centerpiece, with cotton batten, representing snow, surrounding it. Ribbons trailed from the chimney to each place setting. After everyone had gathered around the table, each would pull on his or her ribbon to withdraw from the chimney a small gift.

I found Christmas with my wife’s grandmother charming but alien nonetheless, and I couldn’t imagine adopting her traditions in my own home. But maybe that’s the secret to feeling part of things. Why not adopt Christmas as simply a gift-giving festival, a celebration of the winter solstice a few days late? The Japanese seem to have done that, even though very few of them are Christian. But the Japanese were never the victims of age-old Christian persecution, never grew up with taunts of “Jewboy.” For me, the symbols of Christianity are the symbols of oppression, so that my adoption of Christmas traditions would represent to me a betrayal of my heritage. This is, I know, irrational, but rationality has nothing to do with the matter.

Christmas has passed. Soon the colored lights and the reindeer on the lawns will be taken down and stored for the next season. And until then, I can feel fully American again, with perhaps a slight interruption at Easter.