Feeling Low…

The Father-Son Talk 

I was twelve years old. My father and I were on the train, traveling from our home on Long Island to the city, where he was teaching a course in speed reading that I was taking. It was about eight a.m. Which meant the train was full of people, almost exclusively men in suits. What motivated him to do it then and there I will never understand, but it was on that train ride on that morning that my father, the professor, decided to give his eldest boy the father-son talk.

I only heard the first sentence. It was articulated clearly in his pansophic voice. “Mark. Are you aware that there are actually two biological functions for your penis?”

Every other thought or conversation happening in that train car at that moment came to a screeching halt. I was acutely aware that everyone within earshot was focused on us. For them, I’m sure, my father’s lecture was going to be touching and amusing. For me, it was an absolute adolescent nightmare.

I have no recollection of what happened after that. I could not even tell you whether my father continued his biological treatise. I know only that I would have given anything, even my life, if I could have disappeared.

When my boys reached that age, I was reluctant to put them through the same sort of trauma. So, when K told me it was time for the father-son talk, I balked. “I don’t think they want to have that conversation,” I said. “And anyway, they probably know everything already.”

K disagreed. This was a parental duty, she explained. One of the few that I could do better than she. I was always a sucker for that kind of puffery. So, I agreed. But when it came time for the talk, I eschewed my father’s formal approach. I kept the talks short and sweet.

They went something like this:

Me: I think we should have a talk.

Son: What? Is this going to be the talk about sex?

Me: Well, sort of.

Son: Forget it, Dad. I probably know more than you do.

Me: Yes, you probably do.

Son (smiling): Did Mom put you up to this?

Me (frowning): That’s not the point.

Son (laughing): It’s okay, Dad. Consider the conversation complete. You can assure her that I know what I need to know. You did your job. We had the conversation.

Me: I did? We did?

Son (still laughing): Yes, we did.

Me (clearing my throat): Okay, then. Great! Well, I’m glad we were able to discuss it.

That was then. This is now. In six or seven years, my eldest grandson will be old enough to have the father-son talk with his dad, our second son. But the world is a very different place today. Back then, it was relatively simple. And naïve.

So, when Number Two Son has that conversation, I can only wonder how it will go. Hopefully, not like this…

Old Friends

 I’ve been in Myrtle Beach since Tuesday evening, a few days late to a yearly get together with some old friends. Golfing is the game that gives the week its official purpose. And when this annual reunion began, more than 20 years ago, most of us were golfing earnestly, sometimes twice a day. But over the years, the spirit of competition and even the enthusiasm for the game itself has waned, along with any hopes any of us ever had of becoming truly good golfers.

What’s left is what we had to begin with. An easy sort of friendship that began for some of us in high school and has continued, against all odds, throughout the years. At times, when I consider what different careers we’ve had, and how dispersed we are geographically, it seems miraculous that we are still connected.

But perhaps that’s the point, the link that ties us still together. Friendship, like marriage, endures only if it’s flexible and forgiving. If we want too much from it, we will likely be disappointed. But if we want too little from it, so little that we don’t at least give it the attention it needs, it will disappear.

What I expect from my friends in terms of companionship is what I expect from them in terms of their golf games. They will play with the same energy, enthusiasm, and good will as they have always played – just as I will… and that will be enough.

Hurricane!

It’s been a long time since a strong hurricane passed through this part of Florida. The last one that hit us hard was Irma, a Category 4 storm, in 2017.

Ian came and went Tuesday and Wednesday with only a minimum amount of damage. At Paradise Palms, we were lucky. A Queen Palm blew over. (It will be righted today.) And a 30-foot Royal Palm basically broke in half. It looks like a huge toothpick. (That one’s a goner.)

The thing about living in a hurricane zone is that every time there is one, the weather channels do everything they can to get high ratings. And that means lots of silly stunts to make it look worse than it is.

Ian was classified as a Category 5 storm. That’s as powerful as a hurricane can get. These monster storms can bring wind speeds of more than 150 miles per hour. But it’s not just the wind speed that determines the potential damage a hurricane can cause. Just as important, sometimes more important, is how fast it moves. It might surprise you to know that slow-moving hurricanes generally cause more damage. That’s because they spend more time in any given area pounding away at buildings and trees. Another big factor is storm surges, which, in areas like ours (just across from the beach) often cause the most damage.

Since 1924, there have been 35 documented hurricanes in the North Atlantic that reached this level. And of those, five hit the United States at Category 5 strength. Each is, in itself, a fascinating story. You can read about them here.

All Fixed Up and Ready to Go! 

Friday, September 16: My surgery was scheduled for 12:30 pm. At 9:15 am, K came back from her exercise class to say that there had been a scheduling mix-up. I was supposed to report for my surgery in 15 minutes! The hospital was 30 minutes from our house. As K raced through traffic, I was thinking about another time we rushed to the hospital, 42 years ago, when Number One Son was born.

K got us there at 9:35. I signed in and was rushed to the prep room, where I was hooked up to a heart monitor and an IV. Dr. B came by. So did Dr. Hope. Then the anesthesiologist. I don’t remember getting wheeled into the operating room.

Several hours later, I woke in a recovery room. It was 2:30 pm. Dr Hope was there with another vascular surgeon that had assisted him with my surgery. They were smiling. The operation went “really well,” Dr. Hope said. “And you really, really needed it,” the other one said.

I asked Dr. Hope if they had managed to scrape out all the plaque. “Not all of it, but we got plenty,” he said. “You should be in good shape now.”

I was very happy with that. Given the circumstances as I understood them – three eye strokes and two brain strokes caused by an artery that was 99% occluded – the result was as good as I could have hoped for. Unless something went awry, Dr. Hope said, I would be discharged the very next day.

I nodded off. When I next woke up, K was there. Energized by the outcome of the operation, we spent the next hour or two responding to text messages and phone calls from friends and family and reading emails and texts sent by readers from all over the world.

K left for a while, and I took a nap. When I woke, there was someone, another patient, in the bed next to mine, separated by a curtain. It was a man, an older man. Older, like yours truly. A doctor was with him. They were talking quietly.

Like me, he’d had a stroke. But his had been caused by internal bleeding, not a blockage. He must have lost a good deal of blood because he was being given a transfusion.

From his palaver with the nurses and aides after the doctor left, I learned that his name was Samuel, but he preferred to be called Sam. He was hard of hearing. And his memory wasn’t great. But his demeanor was cheerful, and he was polite. I decided that I liked him and wanted to help him get ready for what he was in for. I would give him the lay of the land.

“Sam!” I whispered.

Nothing.

I raised my voice. “Sam, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

Several times in the following hour, I called out to him. To be sure, he could hear me. I spoke up, but not so loudly as to attract the attention of the nurses. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want them to hear us talking. I felt conspiratorial. In my post-op mind fog, Sam was the faceless prisoner in the cell next to mine.

Eventually, K came back and stayed till visiting hours ended at 8:00. I was happy but exhausted and fell asleep as soon as she left the room. I slept through breakfast and woke when K arrived at 10:00. The charge nurse came in to say I’d be discharged after lunch. This was my last hospital meal:

I’m writing this on Monday morning. I have a six-inch scar on the side of my throat and a little swelling, which will abate soon enough. This is me, yesterday at breakfast:

But I’m feeling good. And lucky. And happy to be alive. I haven’t always felt that way. I’ve written about my bouts of depression and anxiety. I wrote about my down periods because I thought it would be helpful to some readers. And I’ve been told that it was. But it occurs to me now that I haven’t written much about my up periods.

When I’m feeling good, I feel like working. I want to continue to work for Agora, to help it regain its footing and grow. I want to continue to develop FunLimon and Rancho Santana and Paradise Palms. I want to continue with the art collection and build the museum. I may even finish a few of the books I’ve half-written.

I know that I’ll never be done with any of it. And I know that so long as I’m feeling good, I’ll be creating new projects and plans. But I’m not going to stress about any of them. I’m going to be intentional without emotional attachment. I’m going to get healthy. And stay healthy for as long as my body allows. I’m going to carve out more time for family and friends. And for K, if she’ll let me. I’m going to see my grandkids on a regular basis and close my laptop when someone enters the room.

So long as I’m feeling good, I’m going to keep working. But it’s going to be projects I care about, and it’s going to be one project, and one day, at a time.

It’s Ironic. And Surprising. And Scary.

I finished the edits to Friday’s issue on Thursday afternoon. If you read it, you will remember that the main bit was about aging – how my perspective on getting older has changed throughout my life. I said:

“In my 20s and 30s, I didn’t think of death at all. In my 40s and 50s, it felt like a lifetime away. In my 60s, it was a thought, but only an occasional one. But now I can see it just around the next bend.”

At 5:00 p.m., after emailing that essay to Judith, I had a Jiu Jitsu class with Vitor. I was feeling tired, but we wrestled vigorously. And so, by the end of the class an hour later, I was feeling good. Vitor and I sat on the mats talking about this and that, as we often do after a lesson. At one point in our conversation, I noticed that I was having trouble articulating my thoughts. It was difficult to produce a coherent sentence. This went on for maybe a minute. I felt slightly embarrassed. So, I decided it was time to go. I was halfway to my feet when I fell down. We were on a mat, so I wasn’t hurt. I went to stand up again. But, again, I fell down.

I rested for several minutes, attributing my little episode to temporary exhaustion. When I felt I could stand, I did so, successfully this time. As I approached the door to exit, I tried to say something self-denigrating to ease Vitor’s evident discomfort. But the words came out garbled.

Vitor asked me to wait. He went next door to my exercise facility and brought back John, my physical therapist. John gave me a few diagnostic tests. He said he thought I had experienced TIA, which I found out later was short for “transient ischemic attack.” TIA is basically a mini-stroke that doesn’t do any permanent damage. Still, John recommended that I go to the hospital to check it out.

By then, I could speak without a problem and I felt fine. But I agreed to let Vitor drive me home. While Vitor drove me home, John called K and filled her in on what had happened. Seconds after I got out of Vitor’s car, I was in K’s car heading to Boca Raton Regional Hospital.

K dropped me off, and I walked into the emergency room. “It’s probably nothing,” I told the receptionist. “But my friend thinks I just had a TIA.”

She got on the phone, and seconds later a young man was interviewing me. I was amused and flattered. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in an emergency room with a broken this or snapped that, in great pain, waiting hours to have someone take a look at me.

Minutes after my interview with the young man, I was speaking to a doctor. And then another one. By the time K returned from parking the car, less than 15 minutes later, they were admitting me to the neurology wing of the hospital (which, I learned later, has a very good reputation).

I got a CAT scan that night and an ultrasound on my neck the next morning. They told me I needed more tests, so I spent all of Friday getting one test after another. It wasn’t until Saturday afternoon, after the MRI of my brain had been analyzed, that K and I learned it wasn’t a TIA. It was a stroke. Actually, two strokes.

I was aware of the irony of my Friday essay. But I was also surprised. No, shocked. For someone my age – even for someone half my age – I’m in very good shape. I’m strong. I’m flexible. I have good lung power. Stamina. I mean, I compete in grappling with guys half my age. My personal MD had reminded me that my general cholesterol rates were somewhat high. And he’d suggested that I take statin drugs. But I declined. I didn’t need anything, I told myself, except to keep training like a 30-year-old.

Alas, my thinking was flawed. Being in outside shape – and even in inside shape with respect to the usual metrics (blood pressure, blood sugar, heart capacity, lung capacity, etc.) – does not mean your organs and circulation system are in equally good shape.

In my case, the problem was in the left carotid artery. It was 80% to 90% occluded. “But look at me,” I said to the chief neurologist. “I’m fine.” “Yes, you look fine,” she said. “But the ultrasound images look scary.”

“Scary?” Did she have to say “scary”? Couldn’t she have said “not so fine”?

So, I did what any intelligent person would do. I conducted my own scientific research on the World Wide Web. And I managed to come up with enough data and authoritative statements to be convinced that if I lived past the weekend, I’d be lucky to live another three or four years.

This put a damper on the rest of that day and the next. The shadow of death I had alluded to in my Friday essay was now directly in front of me. As the bard said, my “native hue of resolution” was “sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.”

I got no work done on Friday, but managed to get bits and pieces of mindless emails answered on Saturday. And by Saturday afternoon, I was ready to start something more challenging. I started with writing this.

Tomorrow morning (Monday), if all goes well, I will meet with the surgical team that will tell me whether they are going to shove a stent through my groin and up through my heart and into the carotid artery. Or whether they will slice open my neck, open the artery, clean out the plaque, and sew me up. (I’ve done some research on that. Given that the extension of the carotid artery, which is in the head and attached to the brain, is apparently also heavily occluded, I think they’re going to do the cutting surgery, which is fine with me.)

You will be getting this issue, as usual, on Tuesday. If I’ve had the procedure and it was successful, I’m sure I’ll be back to my usual level of resolution. I’ll be pontificating about how to live a better, richer, more productive life, and I’ll be asking you to take my advice.

But what I hope I’m going to be doing is something very different. I am hoping that I will look at this event as just about every person I’ve spoken to has advised me to do. As a lucky break. A second chance.

And they are right.

Of course, they are right! We all know that there are things in life more important than wealth and accomplishment. There’s love. Kindness. Caring. Relationships.

We know all that. And we know that if were smart – like wise-smart – we’d live each day like we truly understood this most fundamental truth.

So, that’s what I’m thinking about tonight. What would I do if I really wanted to live each of my next days with the highest quality of experience I can ask of life? It’s not such a difficult question. The answers, when you are in the state I’m in, come pretty quickly and clearly.

I know what they are. The question: Do I have the resolve to stick with my plans? I felt terrible on Thursday and Friday. I’m feeling good enough to do some work (this work, for example) today. And as I feel better, I notice that the pale cast of thought is getting paler and paler. The resolution seems to be seeping back.

If I actually do what I think I want to do, what I should do in this last, exponentially shortening stage of my life, this may be the last blog post you ever receive from me.

But… check your inbox on Friday. I may have something there, an update, waiting for you.

Feeling My Age… Finally!

I’ll be in Myrtle Beach for a week in October, a yearly get-together with some life-long friends, playing golf, watching football, talking shit, and reminiscing. We’ll rehash old stories about the halcyon days of high school. And there may be some private conversations about the harrowing days in Vietnam. There will be proud accounts of our progeny, ruminations about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And there will be lots of self-deprecating remarks about how our golf games, and all the other activities we engage in, are degenerating due to our age.

I was thinking about that aging issue. And it occurred to me that during each decade of my life, I’ve had a different perspective.

Seven Decades; Seven Relationships With Time 

During my first decade of life, becoming older was an unquestioned good. Something looked forward to with unbridled anticipation. Becoming six would be better than being five. As being eight would be better than being seven. The value of becoming older in that first decade was such an obvious improvement in life that I measured my age in half-years.

Becoming older was equally desirable in my second decade. Each birthday made me in so many ways better off than I had been in previous years. My allowance went up. My responsibilities increased. And what modest liberties my parents gave me expanded. At 17, I enjoyed the height of social status in high school as a senior. The only thing I resented was that I had to wait until October of my freshman year in college to get a legal ID.

In my 20s, the eagerness I had always felt to become older faded. It was gradual. I don’t think I even noticed the change. But looking back at that time now, I can understand what happened. In my 20s, I was at the peak of my physical and mental fitness. I was strong, smart, and quick. I was also learning at the speed of light. I felt like there was nothing I couldn’t do. And that I would never die. I didn’t want to be older because I didn’t need to be older. Becoming 30 would give me nothing that I didn’t have already. I was a 20-something young man, at peak power and confidence, living the dream. The world was my oyster.

As I approached 30, however, I rued the fact that I’d soon be passing out of my 20s. Being 30 wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t peak performance time either. I wasn’t quite as quick in my reflexes as I had been. I remember distinctly the moment when I failed to execute my go-to ball-stealing move in basketball. My mind said “Go.” And my legs said “No!” I began to look for other physical signals that I was “getting old.” And I made a commitment to resist them by incorporating strength and cardio conditioning into my everyday life. I did that. And it helped. The quickness I once had was gone for good. But I was able to maintain my strength and flexibility and stamina.

Turning 40 was another milestone in my relationship with aging. In terms of physical strength, I still had a sufficiency. But my speed and stamina were now waning, along with the quickness. My brain was still firing on all pistons. If anything, I was thinking better than ever. But I could no longer hope to compete physically with younger people. To compensate for the deflating effect this had on my ego, whenever a younger person would outperform me in a physical activity, I would remind him or her that I was “an old man.” And if I happened to win, I could not refrain from reminding my opponent that they had just had their ass kicked by a 40-year-old!

In the decade from 50 to 60, my body continued its slow but steady degradation in terms of quickness, speed, and stamina. But for the first time, I was also losing strength. This was, of course, predictable. (There are competitive weightlifters and even fighters in their 40s, but none in their 50s.) But the loss of strength was difficult to accept. Not because I needed the strength in my daily life, but because it foretold the loss of other capacities.

From 60 to 70, I could, for the first time, refer to myself un-ironically as an old man. I had lost any hope of keeping up with the strength, stamina, agility, or speed of younger people. In Jiu Jitsu, I could win matches against younger opponents, but only if I were technically more advanced than they were. In overall physical terms – i.e., horsepower and athleticism – the kids were miles ahead of me. This I knew I had to accept. And I adjusted to it. At the same time, I had to face another side of aging – the gradual disintegration of my skeleton and heart and lungs all my other vital organs. I have been lucky with that so far. But I was surrounded by friends that were dealing with all kinds of medical problems. That cast a shadow.

And now here I am, almost 72 and very much aware that in eight years I will turn 80. I will continue to dig my heels into the downward slope of my aging, but for the first time ever, I feel like I’m not a younger version of someone my age. I’ll continue to fight the noble fight as hard as I can, but I am also accepting that I will be encountering new physical and mental degradations. And while I’m doing that, I will be seeing something that so far has been out of my range of vision. I’m talking about the specter of death, standing somewhere behind that next milestone at 80.

In my 20s and 30s, I didn’t think of death at all. In my 40s and 50s, it felt like a lifetime away. In my 60s, it was a thought, but only an occasional one. But now I can see it just around the next bend.

The average life expectancy for healthy 70-year-old men in wealthy countries, the data people tell us, is somewhere in the range of 80 to 85. That means I could be in the ground in as little as a decade. And that thought is in the back of almost every decision I make.