Flirting

One of the pleasures of old age is the ability to flirt with attractive women.  I took advantage of one such chance a few days ago when I dropped into the Urgent Care Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering to receive a catheter. The nurse who installed the device was in the first bloom of her loveliness.  Had she not been beautiful, however, she would have been enchanting purely from the nature of her personality -  sweet, attentive, light-hearted, yet devoted.  She acted as if I were the only patient in the world.  And if that wasn’t enough, she was as competent as she was delightful.  I fancy myself a connoisseur of catheter implantations, and this was as painless and fast as possible.  In addition, the catheter was comfortable to wear.  And now I could go home.

But not so fast.  My blood pressure had risen to 221 over 87.  The hospital would not release me with such a high reading.  My nurse returned and gave me an intravenous infusion of a drug designed to bring down my pressure.  It didn’t work.  She then gave me an infusion of another drug with equally null results.  At this point, it was time for the nursing shifts to change.  She came in to say goodbye and to wish me luck.  “It’s your fault I’m still here,” I told her.  “I didn’t want to say goodbye to you.”  I wouldn’t have dared make a remark like that twenty years ago, for fear that the object of my admiration might think I was hitting on her.  No female would think so now, especially in my present condition.  “Well, I’m going home now,” she said, “and I hope you can too.”  Smiling, she patted me affectionately on the knee and left.   

I told her replacement, who was twice as old and half as attractive, that I hadn’t yet taken my evening hypertension pills.  She requisitioned them from the pharmacy and gave them to me.  An hour later my pressure had fallen to 181, still high but not so high as to incarcerate me for the night.  “That’s more like it,” she said, when she saw the results, and then she took my face in both her hands and gave it a firm, maternal squeeze.  Well, even an 80-year-old likes a bit of mothering in situations like that.  But even so, she might as well have patted me on the head and chucked me under the chin.  My career as a Lothario had ended almost as soon as it had begun.


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What's in a Name?

My daughter, a palliative care social worker and a volunteer scout for this blog, sent me a link to an article by a gerontologist about the proper term for designating older adults (http://www.geripal.org/2012/03/elders-older-adults-seniors-language.html).  

The press refers to us as “seniors,” the author tells us, whereas the medical and geriatric literature refers to us as “older adults” or “the elderly.”   He told about being interviewed by a reporter in her seventies who writes about matters of interest to the old.  “I never use the term ‘elderly,’” she said. “My readers don’t respond to ‘older adult’ either. They don’t want to be ‘older.’ We prefer the term ‘senior.’ That’s the phrase I use in all my writing.”

In that case, the gerontologist concluded, those who write for the professional literature should use the term “senior” on the principle that “we should use the term that people use to describe themselves.” 

If the reporter is correct that her readers don’t want to be called “older," it suggests that they view the terms “older adults” or “the elderly” as derogatory.  It’s true that we live in a culture obsessed with youth and the appearance of youth, but I for one refuse to capitulate to it.  Why should I  be ashamed that I'm old?  I’m delighted that I’ve reached 80 and whenever anyone asks me my age (invariably a doctor or nurse), I tell it with considerable pride.  I refer to myself as “old.”  What’s wrong with that?  And if I manage to reach 85, I’ll be happy to refer to myself as “very old.”   The only time I refer to myself as a “senior” is when I request a senior discount.  But now that I think of it, from now on I’ll ask for an “elder’s discount.”  To effect a change in language usage, you have to start somewhere.

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The Loneliness of Extreme Old Age

In the last Times Sunday Review, Louis Begley, a 78-year-old retired lawyer best known for his novels, published an essay entitled “Age and Its Awful Discontents.”   He had nothing good to say about old age, terming its gifts “bitter.”  He attributes his dread of the “ravages and suffering inflicted on the body by age and illness” to his having no role models of successful aging in his family when he was growing up.  Those older relatives who could have provided models for him perished in Poland during the Second World War. 

The chief witness for the ills of aging seems to have been his mother, who died in her 94^th year, a widow for the last 40 of them.  In her final years, her pain, poor hearing, physical disabilities, unwillingness to use a wheelchair, and inability to manage a walker kept her at home, unable to visit museums, attend concerts, or even sit in the park.  Those of her friends who had escaped from Poland and lived in New York had “one by one became homebound or bedridden, lost their minds or died.”  During her last decade, she was, writes Begley, “very lonely.”  It has taken him until now “to feel in full measure the bitterness and anguish of my mother’s solitude - and that of other old people who end their lives without a companion.”

When I read this grim conclusion, I remembered an incident last week in which my wife and I were holding hands as we walked down the street.  A neighbor, who saw us, said it was nice to see us holding hands.  “We’re holding each other up,” said my wife, which raised a laugh from our neighbor and from me.  But as my wife and I continued down the street, the thought struck us both that in truth we were holding each up, not physically of course, not yet anyway, but emotionally.  I count her presence in my life as my chief blessing.  Still, I doubt I would be as lonely as Mr. Begley’s mother in the unlikely event I became a widower.  Our daughter and her family live in the other wing of our building, and my wife and I are making new friends among our neighbors and the younger members of our congregation.  Mr. Begley’s article increases our resolve to strengthen these friendships, because friends of our own age will inevitably drop away, one by one, if we reach extreme old age. 

Louis Begley’s essay reminded me of another essay, Montaigne’s “On the Length of Life,” in which he writes that “dying of old age is a rare death, unique and out of the normal order and therefore less natural than the others.  It is the last, the uttermost way of dying; the farther it is from us, the less we can hope to reach it.”  This was true towards the end of the sixteenth century, when these essays were written, and it remained true until very recently.  But according to the 2000 census, there were more than 50,000 centenarians in the United States, where centenarians comprise the fastest growing age segment of the population, and in 2008 seven-tenths of one per cent of the American population were in their nineties.  The loneliness experienced by Louis Begley’s mother will become an increasing problem. Broadening one’s friendships to include the young may mitigate the loneliness. 

To paraphrase Johnson, while old age has many pains, death has few pleasures.  It behooves us all to broaden our circles, which may reduce the pains of extreme old age, should we attain it.


2010-2012 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

Lost Keys

Two days ago, I lost the elevator key that allows you to ride to our building’s basement, along with the key to one of our building’s basement locker rooms and the key to the padlock that secures our locker.  All of them hung from the same key ring, which I kept in a bureau drawer devoted to my keys.  Ultimately I found them inside the pockets of the pants I was wearing when last I used the keys.  Had I not found them, I would have had to request a new elevator key from our building’s superintendent, for which the building would charge a substantial fee, and I would have had to invite a locksmith to break our locker’s padlock and to sell us a new one.  Frightened at this possible future prospect, I determined to make duplicate keys. 

Nothing is as easy as you think it will be.  First of all, the elevator key cannot be duplicated without some sort of official permit that only the building’s administration possesses.  Second, while the locksmith’s copy of the key to the locker room worked, the key to our padlock did not.  I returned to him and asked him to adjust the latter’s cut, which he did.  Had I thought of it at the time, I would have brought the padlock too so I could test his work.  As it turned out, his second cut was no more successful than his first.  Well, tomorrow’s another day, I told myself.  I’ll return the next day, this time with the padlock.

But yesterday, when I looked for my keys, I could not find them.  I found the duplicate keys where they should have been, in my dedicated drawer for keys.  But where were the originals?  The originals and copies should have been together.  I know the originals are somewhere in the apartment, because when I went to test the locksmith’s second attempt yesterday, I had to use the elevator key.  I checked the pockets of the clothes I was wearing yesterday but they were empty of keys. 

Lady Bracknell said something to the effect that losing one parent is a tragedy but losing two is carelessness.  The opposite is true for keys, at least for this octogenarian.  Losing them once is carelessness, losing them twice is a tragedy.  Thirty years ago, had I lost my keys twice in two days I would have been irritated with myself, but now I felt despondent.   Was I losing my mind?  Was this a sign of diminished cognitive capacity?  Was my wife going to have to hire a caretaker for me?

Well, there was no point in walking to the locksmith yesterday, so I would take my daily walk in Prospect Park.  Diminished capacity or not, I could still walk and I felt reasonably confident that I could obey the traffic lights on the way and afterwards find my way home.  The park is beautiful in every season, but yesterday it was astonishing in its beauty, with a variety of trees and bushes in bloom, including ornamental pear, magnolia, cherry, and forsythia.  A foreign couple with children asked me the way to the zoo, to which they were headed in the wrong direction.  I helped them find their way, which made me feel better, suggesting that my mind was not entirely gone. 

That encounter, the oxygen intake from my walk, and the beauty of the flowering trees and shrubs calmed me down.  I had lost my keys.  I hadn’t lost my mind.  And if all I could worry about were those keys, I was a fortunate man indeed.

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"What Are You Doing Now?"

After services on Shabbat morning, Roger, a much younger man, asked me, “what are you doing now?”  He didn’t ask me “what are you working on?” the question my colleagues and I always asked one another when we hadn’t seen each other for a while.  We assumed that of course the other was preparing a paper, a talk, a book, collecting or analyzing data, and so forth.  But the truth of the matter is these days I’m not working on anything: I’m writing no book, I’m writing no paper, I’m collecting no data, I’m taking no notes.  Perhaps intuiting this, Roger asked me not “what are you working on?” but “what are you doing?” 

“Visiting doctors,” I told him, which was true but only partially so, since that week I had seen only two.  Recognizing the feebleness of my reply, I added that I prepare occasional commentaries on the bible portion of the week (I had prepared two in the past two weeks) and that I’m writing a blog.  I didn’t tell him that I also write a weekly letter to each of our two children, each letter a little essay that sometimes finds its way, transformed, into my blog. 

My response to Roger’s question made me feel bad, like a slacker, as if I spend my days on a park bench, dozing in the sun.  The fact is I’m very busy.  For six days a week I have few idle moments, unless you count the time spent walking in Prospect Park for exercise.  Except on Shabbat, I read little of the Times.  I rarely watch television. Two Netflix CDs have been sitting next to our television set, unopened and unwatched, for at least six months.      

Why am I accomplishing so little?  I’ve added more household tasks to my routine since retiring, I probably work more slowly than I once did, e-mail gobbles up more time now than it did when I was working, and I spend much more time in doctors’ offices and in submitting to medical tests than formerly.  Those changes would account in part for my accomplishing so little at the end of each day.  I wish that performing everyday tasks like folding laundry and balancing checkbooks counted as accomplishments, but since these are taken for granted, the background of everyday life for most of us, I can scarcely list these among my activities.

I might not feel like such a slouch if some of my friends and colleagues, the same age as I or older, were not still writing and editing books.  When I ask them what they’re working on, they have a ready answer.  Perhaps I should dream up another answer to Roger’s question, an answer that would sound as if I’m accomplishing something but at the same time be true.  For in response to the question about what I’m doing now, the answer “nothing much” won’t do. 

But it occurs to me just now that the five essays that I write each a week plus the occasional bible commentary I produce are not "nothing much." They're a reasonably respectable accomplishment for an octogenarian, who's fully entitled to spend his time on a park bench, his face turned to the sun.  So the next time Roger or someone else asks me what I'm doing, I'll tell them what I'm doing and not feel bad about it.


2010-2012 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

Selling Yourself a Bill of Goods

My nose starting running last Friday, when I was shopping on Park Slope's Seventh Avenue.  Upon reaching for my handkerchief, I found it was gone, and then I remembered, too late, that I had used it to blow my nose earlier that day while walking in Prospect Park, that I had placed it in the laundry and then neglected to put another in my pocket.  What should I do?  Surely a man of my advanced years to say nothing of my superb dignity could, in public, wipe his nose on the back of his sleeve. 

As it happened, I was standing in front of Yogo Monster, a shop that dispenses frozen yoghurt in various flavors and toppings. You serve yourself in the large containers the store provides, weigh it, and pay accordingly. Rescue was at hand!  I would just walk in and take a few napkins, walk out, and blow my nose.

I walked in, approached the napkins, and then paused.  How would it look for an apparently respectable elderly man to walk into a shop, steal a few napkins, and then walk out?  Well, I thought, yoghurt is only 49 cents an ounce.  I’ll just buy a bit.  I took one of the store’s huge containers (there’s only one size), and poured what I judged to be about a cup’s worth of frozen vanilla yoghurt into the container.  Over that I poured a generous amount of maple syrup.  After all, what could maple syrup weigh?  To my amazement, the yoghurt plus the syrup plus the container weighed about 7 ounces, but what the hell, in for a penny in for a pound, or in this case 7/16th of one. 

I found an empty table and chair, sat myself down, and slowly consumed the yoghurt, carefully distributing syrup onto each spoonful.  Nothing could be more delicious, especially at four in the afternoon, when such a treat was slightly disreputable.  And then I remembered a Helen Hokinson New Yorker cartoon, which shows two substantial middle-aged ladies standing in front of a patisserie.  One says to the other, “Let’s just walk in and see what happens.” 

Of course I knew what would happen if I walked into the Yogo Monster.  But for the half second it took to walk in, I fooled myself into thinking that it didn’t have to happen, that perhaps it wouldn’t happen, and that maybe I’d escape with only two napkins and without buying any frozen yoghurt.  This is known as selling yourself a bill of goods.  Life would be intolerable were one not able to do that from time to time.


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Clipboard

Last week, the biblical portion of the week was Ki Tisa, which narrated the story of the Golden Calf.  It was probably written as a polemic against idol worship, which persisted among the Israelites at least until the sixth century BCE, but in its own terms it carries significant psychological weight.  It shows how hard it is to change one's behaviors.

My wife, an expert in asking inconvenient questions, asked me on our way home from the synagogue if there were any personal behaviors I found difficult to change.  Yes.  I find myself criticizing the appearance of perfect strangers.  She’s too fat.  Why doesn’t he stand up straight?  Her hair’s a mess.  Doesn’t he realize his comb over isn't fooling anyone?  And so forth.  This is a common fault that we discussed last year in our Mussar group, in connection with the trait of giving honor to others, a fault that I struggled to correct at the time. 

Then we turned to a new trait, I forgot about the old one, and I reverted to my continual criticism, as if I had a mental clipboard on which I was judging the world’s appearance.  But now, in this year’s Mussar group, we’ve returned to the trait of honor and I find myself ashamed that I’ve changed so little, indeed not at all, with respect to these gratuitous criticisms, which surely are a creature of my own insecurities.  And then I felt ashamed of a recent post in which I described three men as “ugly.”  Who am I to judge their appearance?  Was I ever the dream of the year?  And if I wasn’t one at the age of twenty, surely this bent, wizened 80-year old man is not.  But even an Adonis is not entitled to dish out such criticism, for appearance provides little guide to an individual’s character. 

All change is hard, especially when there’s no Moses to keep me in shape.  Even so, I’ll do my best to concentrate on the positive if I can't resist assessing others and to consider my own defects before criticizing others for theirs.



2010-2012 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

I

Grave Goods

As long as corpses have been buried with valuables, either as offerings to the gods or as goods to be used in the next world, graves have been robbed.  When the robbery is surreptitious and carried out for private gain, we call the thieves looters.  When the robbery is carried out in the plain light of day for educational or scientific purposes, we call them archeologists.   But what are the ethics of disturbing the resting places of the dead, no matter how long ago they have died?

This question arose at breakfast yesterday when my wife showed me the front page article in the Science Times about the exhibit,  “Nomads and Networks: the Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan, at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, on loan from four national museums in Kazakhstan.  Taken from burial mounds called kurgans, the objects on display demonstrate that these nomads were not an intermediate step between hunter-gatherers and the complex life of urban dwellers but rather that they were sophisticated, socially stratified, and in contact with other cultures. 

The beauty and craftsmanship of the objects, such as a gold diadem cast in the form of actual and mythological creatures and a golden mask encrusted with semi-precious stones, are stunning.  Taken together, these objects help archeologists learn about the way of life led by these preliterate people, who could leave no written records of their history.  And the display of these goods give those who view them a sumptuous visual treat.  Even so, the increase in our knowledge and the opportunity to see these treasures are the products of desecration and robbery. 

Were not the men and women who were buried in these mounds and were not those grieving relatives who placed them there fully human?  Are they not as deserving of respect as those who were buried last week?  Why do we feel entitled to disturb burial mounds from the fourth century BCE when we wouldn’t dream of doing so to a recent grave? 

When biologists have to kill mice or cockroaches in experiments, they speak of “sacrificing” the victims, thus showing respect for these animals, fellow creatures after all.  Do we show even minimal respect for the people buried in ancient tombs when we not only uncover their corpses but take their treasures? Perhaps we can claim that the careful study of their grave goods shows respect for those whose graves we’ve opened.  But it’s not likely that those who are buried there would have agreed to that assertion had they been asked about it in advance.

My reservations have nothing to do with my own plans for burial, for I've asked my heirs to donate my body to a medical school and then to cremate the remains.  What feeds my disquiet is the lack of respect shown for the inhabitants of these ancient tombs and for their most profound values.  I felt a similar unease a few months ago in the Mummy Room of Cairo's Egyptian Museum, where a dozen or so pharaohs are lined up like so many logs in a row.  The remains of the dead deserve the same consideration as we would want those of our own loved ones to receive.   They ought not to be treated like so many artifacts, even though they are thousands of years old.  Still, they'll probably be preserved a lot longer than most of us, whose remains will return to dust within a few generations.


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Vanity

My last post was mean-spirited, says my wife.  I had written about a visit to my dermatologist, where I had seen before and after photographs of patients on whose faces or necks he had performed minor plastic surgery.  While the surgical interventions were successful – bags under the eyes were lightened, fat around the neck was lessened, etc. – I saw only minor improvements in the patients’ overall appearance.  In the case of three ugly men, they remained ugly after their surgery. 

Perhaps you didn’t see much improvement, my wife told me, but they probably did and it gave them more confidence.  She told me of a young woman whose relationships with men were transformed after breast reduction surgery, although no one but her saw any need for it.  Where, my wife asked me, was your sympathy for these patients’ pain and expense and for the emotional distress that led to their seeking surgical relief?

The day after this mild scolding, Saturday morning, I had the honor and privilege of delivering, to our prayer group, a commentary on the week’s bible portion.  I put on a black turtleneck sweater and a tweed jacket.  No, that won’t do, I told myself as I looked at myself in a full-length mirror.  I changed jackets.  Then I noticed that the skullcap I was wearing, the one I had bought in Abu Simbel, clashed with my jacket.  So I changed to a blue one.  But the blue cap clashed with my silk square, so I had to replace the square.  After I had replaced the square, I looked at myself in the mirror again, posing for animal crackers, as my father used to say, and pronounced myself satisfied.

And then I laughed.  I was scarcely different, I realized, from those patients who had undergone plastic surgery to such little effect.  All of us wanted to look our best.  Yet for all my efforts, my overall appearance would have changed no more than theirs.  The members of my prayer group would see a bent, wrinkled old man, no matter what skullcap, jacket, or silk square I was wearing.  If they were thinking about anyone’s appearance, it was their own, not mine.  So, if it’s possible to learn anything new at 80, I hope I’ve learned that I should examine myself before criticizing others.


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Blindness

The other day, while waiting for a dermatologist to examine me, I watched an automated slide show displaying photographs of some of his patients before and after surgery.  He had performed liposuction on necks, performed laser scaling of faces, lifted eye lids, lifted bags from under the eye, and so forth.  There were equal numbers of male and female patients and most were middle-aged, although several appeared to be in their seventies.  The cosmetic changes were immediately apparent, but what was remarkable was how little difference they made to the patients’ overall appearance.  Those who were homely, the majority in fact, remained so.  In three cases, the men were spectacularly ugly both before and after surgery, leading me to conclude that there’s no end to our vanity and self-delusion.  

 
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Calling a Spade a Spade

Have you ever thought of just the right thing to say too late to say it?  I did when someone addressed me as “young man,” and the comeback I’d thought of was too late.    But I determined to use it the first time the opportunity presented itself.  Well, the opportunity presented itself a couple of times before I finally used it, first because I had forgotten it and then because I didn’t think of it in time.  But last week, when a hospital orderly, helping me down from a cystoscopy table, said “easy, young man,” I said “if I look like this when I’m young, what will I look like when I’m old?”  This made him laugh and gave me immense satisfaction. 

But why should being addressed as “young man” bother me?  Does that term of address suggest that old age is disreputable, shameful and therefore the speaker must pretend that I’m young?  If this was the speaker’s goal, a far better strategy to accomplish it would have been to use a neutral term, such as “sir,” or “Mr.” plus last name or even the elder’s first name alone, as so many medical workers do. 

But I don’t think that was the orderly’s goal.  His tone was both respectful and affectionate. Would I have felt better had he addressed me as “Grandfather,” as is the custom in some other cultures, or “Grandpa”?   I wouldn’t mind “Grandfather,” although its use would mark the speaker as foreign.  But “Grandpa” would be as irritating as “young man,” because it carries more than a whiff of condescension.   And now that I think of it, that’s the basis of my reaction to “young man.”  It strikes me as condescending. 

For years, my late beloved Uncle Bill would greet me with “hello, young man,” even when I had reached middle age.  But of course I was a young man in comparison to him.  His term of address was a mark of affection and I understood it as such.  Nowadays, the only people who address me as “young man” are strangers, invariably men of lower socioeconomic status.  Perhaps there are different rules of speaking at play here.

I recall the transit authority worker who addressed me as “Buddy” last summer as he complimented me on my attire, telling me that I looked so “sharp” I’d be able to go out with beautiful women.  “I already am,” I said, gesturing toward my wife who was walking ahead of me.  (For once I had a timely response.)  He laughed and I felt good about the exchange.  He was as condescending as the hospital orderly, but unlike the orderly, his address was humorous and ironic. 

If I complain about being called “young man” it shows I don’t have much to worry about, and for that I’m grateful.  In response to my good fortune, I’ll try not to take myself so seriously.  What, after all, does it matter?

A Sudden Death

A house fire recently killed A.R., my brother’s college roommate, his oldest remaining friend.  I’d met him many times, beginning with my brother’s wedding in 1961, continuing with the marriages of my brother’s children, and ending with the party that my brother and his wife gave last June to celebrate their 50^th wedding anniversary.  That last time, A.R. and I spoke as we always did.  And as always I found him to be a likeable, sensible guy and easy to talk to – requisites, I guess, for the successful practice of his profession, psychiatry. 

For my brother, who spoke to him just a few days before he died, A. R.’s loss is a major blow.  Friendships are precious.  Each is its own world.  When that friendship dies, a world dies with it.  I was sad, of course, to hear of A.R.’s death, and I was concerned for my brother, but I also regretted not having made more of an effort to explore the landscape of A.R.’s life during that anniversary celebration. There would always be another time, I thought, if I thought about it at all. 

A. R. was my brother’s age, four years younger than I, so I never thought of him as an old man, although of course at 76 he was.  I didn't wonder, as I said goodbye to him last June, if this would be the last time I would see him, as I did with my uncle and my father during their last years, as I still do for friends who are a lot older than I am. 

We’re advised to be grateful to see the sun rise, and in general I am.  But what A. R.’s death has driven home to me is that we should also be grateful that the sun rises for members of our family and friends, even the youngest among them.  A school mate of my nephew, a young man, just died from a heart attack.  His sudden death could no more have been predicted than A.R.’s death in a fire.  My interest in predicting my own longevity, outlined in the past few posts, blinded me to the longevity of others.

But it’s obvious we cannot frame each conversation with someone who is close to us as if it will never see one another again.  If we acted that way, our friends and family would hide behind the curtains when they saw us coming up the steps.  But we can at least be aware that the time will come when we cannot say anything more to the persons we love. That’s an incentive to say it now.  “I love you” would be a good place to start.

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Concentrating the Mind

In my last post I presented my life expectancy according to various indices.  These ranged from a 50% chance of living another ten years to only a 4%-14% chance of living that long.  The morning after posting that essay, I awoke with a fever and knew almost at once that another bronchitis attack had begun. This is not a death-defying illness.  Indeed bronchitis is literally an intimate if promiscuous bedfellow, visiting me three or four times a year.  But its appearance so soon after my post about the odds of my reaching given ages reminded me that these indices are not academic exercises.  They deal with my death, which can come at any time.

But perhaps it would be more constructive to say that they also deal with life, for even the most pessimistic of the medical indices gives me a 72%-80% chance of living for at least another four years.  “ Depend upon it, sir,” Boswell reports Johnson as asserting, “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”   The certainty of death in two weeks must concentrate the mind more wonderfully than does the relatively small chance of dying within four years.  But since these odds  are scarcely negligible, I have to ask myself, as I recuperate from this damned bronchitis attack, how I want to spend the time that is left, whether it's ten years, five years, or for that matter two weeks. 

In June we’re scheduled to travel to Alaska to attend the festivities surrounding the celebration of the 41^st anniversary of a good friend’s 39^th birthday and the 60^th anniversary she and her husband will be observing.  And in July we hope to travel to Jerusalem to see old friends and to visit once again our familiar haunts.  We have no more major travel plans after that.  And to tell the truth, I think I’ve seen enough of the world already.  If I never watch the penguins on an Antarctic iceberg or observe Carnaval in Rio, I won’t feel that my life has been wasted.  The same can be said for writing another book. 

What comes to mind, when I consider what to accomplish during this last stage of my life, is similar to what I proposed twenty years ago, as I was lying on an Aegean beach following an operation to remove a colon cancer.  The first aim was the maintenance and if possible the strengthening of my relationships with family and friends.  That aim remains the same.   I will continue to do my best to listen to my family and friends and not to take them for granted.  They require conscious and continuous attention.  The second goal was the enjoyment of music, art, and literature.  Experience has taught me that this was a pious wish, and that in fact reading is more important to me.  I will do my best, when I read for pleasure, to confine myself as much as possible to great literature.  This may mean that I won’t have read most of the current best sellers, but ars longa vita brevis, and besides, truth to tell, few of the current best-sellers have given me more than moderate enjoyment.

Twenty years I also set a third goal, which was to find out what else I could do outside the academy.  If I haven't found out by now, it's not likely that I ever will.  However, I've replaced it with another goal, and that's to continue writing this blog, this personal account of the ups and downs of aging, for as long as possible.


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