Yesterday was our guest’s last full day in New York before
leaving for a conference in Tel Aviv, where he will spend a week before flying
home to Germany. A past president of
his city’s psychoanalytic institute and instrumental in bringing psychoanalytic
method to the former East Germany, he was a stimulating guest.
Although he had visited New York many times before, he had
never seen the Brooklyn Bridge, so I took him to the Promenade in Brooklyn
Heights, which offers a spectacular view of it. On our way to Borough Hall, which was next
on our morning’s tour, I pointed out Monroe Place, a few blocks away from the
Promenade, where I had lived more than 50 years ago. Fifty years ago! How is it possible when most of the time I
don’t feel as if I’m more than 40?
Most of the time, yes, but there are frequent reality
checks. Among them are climbing the
subway stairs, when I have to stop half way up to rest my aching thigh muscles even
though I’d been half pulling myself up by means of the railing. And then there are the many times young
people offer me their seat on the subway without my asking them, without my even first meeting their gaze.
Just the other day, as my wife, our German friend, and I were
walking to Shabbat services (he’s not Jewish but was accompanying us out of
curiosity), as we waited for the light to change at the Grand Army Plaza, a
young fellow, perhaps 20, called out to me, “You look sharp!” This pleased me, of course, for I had done my
best to dress well, but on the other hand I reflected that he would never have
complimented me had I been even twenty years younger.
When I discussed the interchange with our psychoanalyst
friend, he said, “Do you remember when you were twenty or thirty and
encountered a man in his 80s? Then you’ll know how you appear to others.” Of course he’s right, but that reality check
was a particularly bitter one.
I offered my theory that just as I feel free to address a
baby, an utter stranger, so the young man felt free to address me. And what’s in common between the baby and
me? It’s powerlessness, exclusion from the role-relationships of everyday life, as least as perceived by the public at large.
“Why,” I asked our friend, “am I so surprised to find that
I’m 80?” He said he knew what I meant
because he feels the same way at 75.
“Because,” he continued, “our emotions haven’t grown old. They’re the
same as they always were.” That explains
a lot more than my surprise at having grown old.
2010-2012 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Righrs Reserved
2010-2012 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Righrs Reserved
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