Novel Excerpt: Ida

 I thought, well why not, put up a little of the book on the blog and see how it looks in print.  The title of the novel is Condo, a story about Marmouth Castle III, a 10-story condominium association in the city of Chicago. The building hosts ten units to a floor. Did I say it is entirely fictional? It is.

We meet Ida Pollack, a woman in her late nineties. Her neighbor, Alex Fox, has finished his morning prayers at the synagogue and is back from a quick bike ride on the forest preserve trails across the street. Alex is ready for breakfast, about to enter his apartment when he hears Ida Pollack shouting after him, ‘Alex. Alex Fox!’ She is pushing her maroon walker off the elevator, a large box on the seat of the cruiser.  Alex strides over to help her. 

‘Hey, Mrs. Pollack. Let me take that. You are up and about early today.                                                    

'As are you, Mr. Fox.’

‘Alex. Call me Alex.’

Ida ignores him and points up at peeling wallpaper at a molding in the hallway. ‘Do you see that wallpaper? That has to change.’

‘Yeah, pretty gross.’

‘And how! So glad you to see you. I’ve been having trouble with my key. I think it is bent and that it probably needs replacing. Can you help me?’

‘Of course. Sure.’

Thinking he wants to help with her package, too, she says, ‘I’ll carry the box, it’s light. My niece sent me a new keyboard for my computer and for some reason they put this relatively small item in an awfully big box. I may be the oldest person in this building, but I am not an invalid. Even if it were heavier I could handle it.’

‘I don’t think you are the oldest.’

‘Second oldest, fine.’

‘Harriet always asks me to shlep everything, no matter if it is heavy or not. She likes me in that kind of role, rescuing the beautiful woman role.’

‘Ha! Funny, that Harriet. She’s active like me. I still swim every day and intend to get into the pool—the indoor pool—in a few minutes. I was quite the athlete in my day,’ she sighs. ‘You young people could take a lesson about exercise.’

Alex raises his eyebrows and nods vigorously. ‘Yep!’

‘Well, you get it. Anyway, it would be nice if everyone had your common sense. It would be nice if someone besides me, for example, would get on top the people around here who don’t follow pool rules. Some old fashioned community pressure might help! Whatever the rule, people seem to have to break it, disagree, no matter how sensible. I need to turn over the job of rule enforcement. It’s too much lately.’

‘Yeah, I’m not so sure I want it.’

‘No one does. Well, Horace does, for all his faults. He loves a good rule. In his heart he wants to run a tight ship.’

‘Wanting and doing—two different things.’

‘Give him a chance, Alex.’

‘Okay,’ he smiles.

They are still outside 608, Ida’s unit, and she is rummaging through a voluminously deep burgundy Kate Spade bag, feeling for her keys. Her hands shake, refuse to obey orders, and Alex knows his assignment, help her with her door, fit that key in the lock. She is otherwise independent. 

She fishes out the key and looks up into his eyes. ‘You know what I should do?’

‘What, Mrs. Pollack?’

‘I should wear one of those lanyard wrist bands. But they irritate my skin.’ She inadvertently drops her keys to the hall carpet. Alex jumps to recover them.

‘You didn’t have to do that.’

‘Old habits are hard to break.’

‘That’s the truth. You know, I worked up to my eighty-third birthday. Now that’s a hard habit to break. Work.’

‘Money. We gotta eat is the thing.

‘It’s more than that. Work is more than what we do for money—it is for some of us lucky souls, especially if we have no children, no spouse. It is a place to be. A place we’re valued and find value in others.’

Alex swallows, doesn’t quite know what to say. He has successfully unlatched both locks. The door cracks open and the older woman toddles in pushing her walker, the box atop the leather seat. Alex makes a move to take it. He assumes it should go on a low marble-topped sidepiece by the door. 

‘Leave it. Leave it,’ she commands. ‘The apartment is a mess. I’m embarrassed. But thank you, Alex Fox.’

‘Anytime, Mrs. Pollack.’

‘Ida.’

‘Ida. Um, Ida, we should think about getting you a combination lock. I want one, too.’

It is her turn to raise her eyebrows. ‘Now that’s a thought. Have a good day, Alex.’ 

Alex thinks that she seems fatigued, weak. Or maybe that’s just what it is to be a certain age at certain times of the day.

‘You take care, Mrs. Pollack.’ He takes his leave and she firmly closes the door, double locks it, drops her purse, her pride and joy, to the floor. The Kate Spade bag is a gift from her niece. Ida stares into space for a moment before struggling out of her jacket and painfully hangs it up. The arthritis in her elbow is killing her.

The closet is bare but for a designer raincoat (Michael Kors, I’ve seen it) and an Anne Klein puffer for winter. A tan suede jacket, fleece lining, at least forty years old, and a full-length mink she hasn’t worn in a long, long time, are zipped into an apparel bag. Ida carefully adds the nylon windbreaker that she wore today to the closet, royal blue to match her eyes —it can be cool in the package room. She steadies herself with one hand on the walker. The jacket slides off the hanger and she lets out an expletive, one she wishes she didn’t say as often as she does. The word is out of her mouth, however, and she makes a mental note to work harder at this. She tries again with the jacket, this time more purposefully. 

She speaks to the vacuum cleaner, an old Hoover standing proud. I’ll get to you. But not today. Breakfast first. Then, she thinks, Later I will have linner with Ed Wintergreen. Linner, that word that she and Ed made up for the meal they have between lunch and dinner. 

In the refrigerator she finds everything but eggs, which is what she would have preferred for breakfast. She has bought fresh goat cheese for some reason—oh, for the beet borsht, and ready-to-eat chicken and string bean take-out from the local Jewel deli. The deli is new, all kosher. It is worth it to take the shuttle there twice a week for good ready-made salads. But it is too early for any of that.

She will settle into her swivel Dunbar chair to eat her daily toast lavished in butter and to watch The Morning News. The Dunbar has seen better days. She’s angry at herself for not having recovered it. The frayed burgundy fabric, the color regrettable, hurts her eyes. I should have had it reupholstered you years ago, she thinks. Her choice? Bright colors, a happy pattern would have increased the vintage chair’s value considerably. One day her nieces and nephew might think to do that. But for now, where is she going? Who does she have to impress?

The television channel is set to 106, the building closed circuit video stream. She must have been watching late last night. Four squares of activity reveal four locations: the front lobby, the pool, the mailboxes, and the back lobby, the door to the package room. There are more cameras in the building, but this is it, this is what unit owners get to see. They know who isn’t closing the back door, who is in the hall by the mailbox. The Board talked about adding another channel so that night owls could view other venues but opted out. It  didn’t sound cost effective at the time.  

She sees Maurice Katz, also an early riser, reading the latest sign on the front lobby marquis. He seems angry. Shelley, the maintenance-person, appears, too. She just saw Shelley in the package room and had asked her to stop in to jiggle her lock, perhaps squirt the keyhole with a little W-D 40. The two women, fifty years apart, commiserate as peers. What in the world is going on? What’s going to become of this place? There went the neighborhood.  

From the monitors Ida sees that nobody is in the pool and that the door to the back lobby has been left wide open once again. No wonder we have thieves in the building, she mumbles to herself. She sees Ed coming back from his swim. She isn’t that much older than Ed but he looks far more fit, has no trouble walking, less trouble with his hands. He does get an occasional dizzy spell. This only Ida knows. 

One of the great loves of her life, Ed Wintergreen. The couple started out as friends in a bowling league, gravitated toward one another. It did not take them long to fall in love, but for over sixty years Ed had to settle for an on again-off again relationship. Ida refused to commit. She still does. Even now. You hear of couples getting married in their later years, but not Ed and Ida. I drove him crazy, she thinks. Still do. She takes no pride in this, merely understands that this is the way it has to be. She does not want to bump in to him in the bathroom. She wants to want it to be forever fresh.

Shelley knocks loudly so that Ida is sure to hear it. The older woman sets her toast on an oak glass-topped coffee table, an antique with an Oriental theme. They don’t use the word Oriental, anymore, she’s been advised. But that is exactly the word used by the Marshall Field’s personal shopper to describe the décor when she bought that table in the seventies. Oriental was in, very popular. 

Before answering the door for Shelley—she did ask her to stop by—Ida watches Ed for another second on the black and white monitor, mentally seeing him in technicolor, his powder blue cover up against his strong legs. He is truly a handsome specimen of a male, she thinks. She loves him in powder blue. She loves blue, all shades of blue, on most people.

Balancing with a hand to the wall Ida carefully makes her way to let in her young friend. She is surprised that Shelley responded so soon. As she toddles so as not to fall, eyes flitter at the mantel above the fireplace, a display of framed photographs, trinkets, trophies. They are dust-catchers, she thinks. Dust-catchers that are her. She likes to pour over them to remember a younger self.

Shelley is in her ugly gray maintenance uniform, the one that washes out her complexion. She is pale, her hair light brown, eyes are pretty, not dull as in the type of dull that drinkers have in the morning. She should wear powder blue! True, like the song goes, she could lose a few pounds. It is Shelley’s kindness that Ida admires, but also her sense about the way things work. Shelley does side jobs for Ida for a measly twenty dollar tip. She stops leaky faucets, unclogs drains, checks on buzzing convectors. Convectors buzz when leaves get inside but there is no place else to put her two small windowsill houseplants.  

‘I thought I’d catch you now because there’s so much to do today,’ the young woman opens. ‘Horace is on top of me. He wants to present well at these meetings, have something to show for the month. Theo has to go someplace. We’re all so busy. It’s nuts. The boiler is acting weird and I have to make a run to Home Depot. So busy, Ida.’ 

‘Oh I know, I know! Everyone is busy.’ 

‘Yeah. Did you see that somebody had a set of tires delivered to the package room? This is the second time. Do you think he’s running a tire business out of his apartment?’

‘Ha, ha. Or her apartment. Yes, I saw that. We should fine whoever that is. That’s ridiculous to take up all that space. Tell Horace to mention it at the meeting.’

‘Yeah. Good idea.’ 

‘Who goes shopping for tires on the Internet?’ Ida finally asks, registering disapproval again and expressing incredulity as is her habit, her personality. Ida always appears flabbergasted at the stupidity, rudeness, or laziness of others. ‘People should have big things like that delivered to their doors if they need a delivery. I’ve seen entire bedroom sets in that package room that sit for days. If you have a walker you can’t exactly move around because of all the crap all over the place. People have no consideration, none. It is one of my pet peeves the way owners take advantage of the privileges in the building.’

‘You’re in good company on that one, Ida. But if we let Amazon, UPS, and the FedEx delivery guys roam the halls we could find ourselves with a security problem, am I right?’

‘So then maintenance should do it—you and the boys should bring up the large packages—but I realize that would be a terrible inconvenience for you.’

‘Not enough hours in the day, Ida.’ Shelley shakes her head slowly. ‘No way that’s happening.’

‘It used to be like that. That’s how it used to be. Packages delivered to our doors.’

‘Those days are gone. There were a lot fewer packages. Change of subject. How ya’ feeling?’ 

Ida shrugs. ‘Eh.’

Shelley is one of the few people who cares. Ida can be an irritable sort, and as the building’s previous rule enforcer, an old lady who would forever be telling residents what they should and should not do, she is unpopular to some, adored by others. She yells at the kids –especially at the pool— to stop running, admonishes adults to put their sunscreen on in their apartments first, not at the pool, so that the oil soaks into their skin, not the water. She used to be a lifeguard years ago. 

Shelley shrugs. ‘Well, you’re still valuable around here, always keeping an eye on the back door, the back lobby. Manning the monitors. That’s good, Ida. We need night owls in this place watching channel 106. Let’s get to fixing your door lock, okay?’

‘Okay!’ Ida agrees. ‘You know, people still leave the door open in the back, Shelley. We have to bring that up, too. There is no security guard here anymore. I’ll tell Karen that I want to bring this up at a meeting, maybe I’ll even make a motion that we cough up the money to get a security guard. We’ll need a special assessment for that.’ 

Shelley is jiggling with the door knob. She squirts a little machine oil into the keyhole. ‘I think you’re right. You just need a little grease in there. Try it now.’

Ida turns the key. ‘Oh! You’re a genius.’

‘Not. But I’m out of here. Before I go, please tell me. What do you think of your new neighbor Rae? I think she’ll be a huge asset to Marmouth Castle. She has experience in building management.’

‘Who?’

‘Your neighbor across the hall, Rae somebody? Wears a uniform like me?’ Shelley points proudly to her name. Shelleyis stitched in red above her shirt pocket. ‘She’s a house painter.’

‘Oh, I’ve seen the woman you are talking about. She lives next to the Khans, third floor. You know that I know every single unit owner’s apartment number and I know all of their names. Rae D’aello, 309. We haven’t really talked. Do you like her, Shel’?’

‘She seems like a good person to me.’

‘Maybe. Oh. Now those Foxes, the Samsons. They are good people.’

‘They are, they are. Okay, see you later!’

‘Bye Shelley, thank you so much. I’m getting back to my breakfast now.’

The door closes and it takes a few seconds before Ida returns to her Dunbar chair. On the way she stops to take a close look at the bowling trophies on the mantel. She lightly touches one, Bnai Brith 1^st Place, the words etched on silver in script. Her name and the names of her five of her best friends are etched in below. Ed is on the list. The trophies remind her so much of her youth, it is proof that she had one. First place—so many of them are for first place. Or second.  

We used to be a pretty good team, didn’t we? She is addressing her friends, her fellow bowling partners, as if they are still alive. 

Beverly could you always could get the strike when we needed it. Sarah, not so much, but consistent at 130, give or take a few points. But that enthusiasm. No one could match your enthusiasm, Sarah. Certainly not me. 

Max Rothschild, your scores? Up and down. If only you could control that hook. Sidney Lamar—how we counted on you to bring up our average, and you always did it! Probably you shouldn’t have missed your daughter’s birth, but we did win that tournament in 1952. 

And Ed, my lovely Eddie. Consistent. Graceful. Perfect. We sent them flying, those pins, didn’t we? Until we couldn’t, or the doctors wouldn’t let us. Wouldn’t let me.

Max—did you have to have that damn stroke? That was terrible. That guy who replaced you was okay, but missing you, well, we missed you terribly. But until then, what fun it was! Right Max? Closing down the deli on Dempster? Hy and Stan’s? Or was it Sam and Hy’s? Crazy how some things I can remember, and others get lost in the cobwebs.

She speaks to each of them, marvels at their youth, their skill. We bowled, we played poker. We smoked! Until that had to go for obvious reasons. We could swim for hours, it seemed. None of this video game, binge watching television crap that my great-niece Sarit talks about— pathetic ideas of fun. 

Ida lifts a trophy to keep it real, wipes it with her hanky, then sets it down.

Yes, back in the day, true. We could bowl. I could bowl. I could do a lot of things back in the day. 

Then she returns to her chair. She doesn’t mind that her toast is cold. 

 

 

       

  

The Last Thirty Years

 A friend of mine didn't like her 70th birthday. She told me how she felt.

Old Friends

'At first I was fine. I thought, well, I might have close to 30 years left! That's not bad. That's a big chunk of time. But then it occurred to me that I might not get those 30 years. How can I count on getting them? There is no guarantee I will live until 100. 

That's true, I sigh.

She continues: 

So I thought, well, I could have 20 years left if I make it to 90. For sure I'll live to 80. Both my parents lived into their 80's and they didn't take good care of themselves. But I do take care of myself. Plus I don't have their health problems. They lived until their late 80's so I should be able to make it to to at least 90, maybe even 100 with a lot of luck.

A lot of luck, I say. Is it ageism to say that?

My friend answers. No, it isn't ageism. Most people do not make it to 100. I won't either, she laughs sardonically. Who am I kidding?

But let's say that I make it to 90, then that gives me another 20 years starting now, which seems like a pretty long time. 

I cock my head. Uh huh.

But I might fall. I take more risks than my parents ever did. I do more things. If I fall and break a bone, if I'm in a car accident, it could take a year to heal, at least. It might never heal. There might be complications. I'll be lucky if I make it to 80 if I fall in my 70's. Which means I have to consider lifestyle changes. Now.

Those can be good! I declare encouragingly.

I don't want to consider lifestyle changes. I'm too young. 

Sorry.

But then I thought, well, what's wrong with another 10 years, living to 80. Lived to the fullest 10 years could be amazing. It could be fantastic! I should retire, buy an RV, travel the country. Live it up.

But I might only make it to 80. Maybe I'll only make it to, say, 75, and living it up for a whopping five years seems lame. Better than nothing, because I could get hit by a truck tomorrow, but not enough. It doesn't seem like a very long time at all, five more years.

Let's say I evenmake it to 75. By then my eyesight will be even worse than it already is. It isn't great now. And there's a likelihood that something else might pop up, some kind of cancer or another. It is inevitable, People get cancer. 

It will be a miracle if I make it to 75. A miracle.

I say nothing.

But it is curable! I made it through Covid, didn't even get it! I could get treatment--for whatever deadly disease I do get, probably a brain tumor. I would go into remission, change my life, appreciate it more. Every day is a blessing. Just get me to 75. I could be okay even with the thought of only making it to 75.

Would you? I ask.

She thinks about it and looks me in the eye before saying: It is entirely possible that I won't make it to 75 so the question is moot.  

I say Yeah, it is possible. But you're in good shape. Why borrow trouble? Why not stay in the moment and enjoy life as it is, not how it might or might not be?

I might not make it to 71, you're saying, but I shouldn't worry about it. Really? Really? Are you freaking kidding me? If you thought you were only going to live until 71 would you not be out of your mind?

Yeah, I say. I would obsess about it. True.  So let's not worry about it, not think about it, save ourselves the grief, shall we?

therapydoc 

What I Did on My Covid Vacation

This post is only tangentially about what I did during the Covid quarantine. We'll all be digging out of this in the next six months, processing the effects upon our children, parents, ourselves. But we're supposed to reflect this time of year, and we should reflect on the year gone by, or share our dreams for the future. An alternative post would be called, What I'd Like to Do When I'm Free to Move About the Cabin (when Covid is no longer a threat).

BALANCE BOARD, a metaphor? Nah

Hi FBI! 

Friends, I know that this is going to sound like I had a brief psychotic episode or symptoms of schizophrenia, you decide. It started about five years ago. 

Following someone's incarceration for a federal crime, a parent of this person, still positive that her kid would be freed one day, called me to chat. Not unusual, but as we're getting into it she says, "Oh, by the.way, the FBI is listening, just thought you should know. They tap all of our phones and because we're friends, they're tapping yours now, too!" 

We call that a snowball sample in research.

What do you say to that kind of news, that your conversations are now an open book? 

"Oh, good, no problem, no breach of HIPAA in that, me talking to patients fairly often. LOL." 

So every once in awhile we would pause and one of us would say, "Hi FBI! What's up?!! Everything good?  Great, now run along." 

Now. We've all watched enough television to know what that is like, how it works when the FBI is listening in. We're not talking some guy in a van and a bug planted in a telephone while you're out running an errand. We're talking two guys with headsets in a large room full of similar young men (never women) listening in on the conversations of every day Americans who might be planning a revolution to overthrow the government. Or they might be discussing the merits of buying the bedspread with the blue print over the one in white. 

I think the first time I saw the FBI listening in was on The Good Fight starring Christine Baranski, the sequel to The Good Wife, but it might have been The West Wing. The plot in The Good Fight took a dark turn and scared me, which isn't my thing, so I stopped watching and have no idea if they threw Christine into jail or what happened to the plot. Upset me, fine, like in Valley of Tears. But don't scare me.

Fast forward, we've learned quite recently, although the story has been scuttled to a large degree, that Russian intelligence has indeed hacked into all vital US governmental networks. I hope this isn't news to anyone reading. The upshot is that our identities are gone, our financial information is bare, and we should probably be learning Russian in our spare time. 

Why bring this up now? Because last night, reviewing all of the projects that I had time to work on these past ten months (not having to commute to work frees up a lot of time), I realized that although I had time to throw out old clothes, rearrange furniture, and indulge my hobbies, like buying a new aquarium and selling the old, I didn't do much writing. Except for scholarly stuff which is really difficult to finish because you're always sweating each sentence for a source. And then, in the process of looking things up, you find new things to learn and read about. So you could say that during the past ten months I learned, and learned, and learned, which is an accomplishment, but actually finishing anything to publish in an academic journal hasn't happened. Not that it won't, we're getting there; it just takes time. This is the reason so many begin their dissertations and never finish. 

But more than that, I wasn't in the mood to write for fun. Seven years ago when my mother passed away this blog took a downturn in content. I stopped writing, and now I get why. You need a certain flow in the serotonin to blog well. 

Meanwhile, and here's the exciting subplot, in 2017 it became clear that much traffic generated to this blog came here from Russia. That scared me out of blogging. Once you think somebody is reading your email, you get a little reluctant to use that account. There had always been a great deal of comfort in being an anonymous blogger, occasionally changing my so-called real name. Once the email address and feed were compromised, it simply felt dangerous to write and disseminate posts to those of you who subscribed.

Rationally, that's ridiculous. What in this blog is political? Nothing, nothing political, really, nothing subversive or anti-government. And believe me, the diagnosis of the 45th president of the United States did not escape this therapydoc from the get go. The Russians are not listening to us, we're not that important, or reading this blog. But in case they are, we can only hope they like whatever content is coming up this year. Because this year will be different from all others. The blog, and I say this in good faith, shall go on.

It could be about things that have happened, like two recent suicides in my community, or it could be about current events. But more likely I'll write about getting older, pretty sure, not that a lot of people will care. But getting older is shocking. You think back on the milestone birthdays like 16 (half of 32, a friend's mother told me way back when-- trying to get a reaction out of me at 16, which it did, turns out it's a snapshot memory). Forty and fifty are milestones, wrinkles, menopause, divorce, weddings, launching the kids. 

But you think to yourself, why did you stress about any of that, fifty being the new forty, blah, blah, blah. Then you round sixty and your senses change and the stress quadruples. You can't hear. You have to get hearing aids. You can't see, need cataract surgery. Your hair goes gray, seemingly over night. But you hate the smell of hair color, have distinct memories from your mother dyeing her hair and closing the bathroom door.

You become invisible except to others who are going through similar metamorphoses. You're strolling (with a mask, naturally) and you pass another silver-haired woman who is working on her lawn, raking, also wearing a mask. She's seemingly robust, and you silently nod to one another, acknowledging that the two of you could have been in high school together suggesting to the teacher that you would rather read anything by Jack Kerouac and Samuel Beckett than Silas Marner,* and now you're both thinking that the vision of getting the stinking virus is like looking death in the eye. You want to talk to her about that and ask, So how's it working for you, worrying about an early demise. But you nod and stroll on.

So yes, there's a lot to talk about. I feel like I could be back. I'm in a good mood, hoping for a vaccination, hoping to see people in real time, real space in a couple of months, maybe get on a plane. But even working on Zoom, there's much to talk about-- like how great it is to stand up while I'm working, stretch, balance on a balance board. You can't do that when you work in an office and a patient is sitting on the sofa across from you.

The Zoom blogging material is here. Like the patient who never stops telling me how she likes a blouse from decades ago, or how I look today or my haircut (naturally, my hair). The patient is a heterosexual female, not objectifying me in that way, but it bothers me. I've mentioned it to her but she can't help it. It's like people who always say that they are sorry when there's nothing to be sorry about, a hard habit to break. We could talk about that, that even the nicest people in the world can upset a therapist who gets impatient and has to call another therapist and vent. What the heck? But the patient has no idea that my sideline is sexual harassment prevention and objectification is a trigger.

Hey, FBI, we good?

therapydoc

*I'm ordering a copy from the library right now.

More Snapshots: You Is Kind, You Is Smart, You Is Important

1. Recycling

I approach the bin, a huge black plastic garbage can, with trepidation. It's getting too full. I'll never get the mega-sized clear plastic bag to the car. Someone else will have to do it, so I walk away.  But I want that stuff out of my house.

It occurs to me that recycling, although it should be a workable intervention to relieve hoarding, never works. You would think that if someone can't throw out a perfectly good cardboard box, but knows it has to go, that recycling would be solace, a certain consolation, knowing that a perfectly decent box isn't going to landfill.

But OCPD, (Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder) is one of our more intractable disorders. And with all of the presents, all the good boxes coming our way, sufferers are going to feel the stress.

2. Holiday Social Skill

This time of year I usually set you up for a good party. Most people find at least one party to mark the holidays, and cluster around the guac.

Let's say Billy meets Sally approaching the guac, and they can't help but say something to one another while dipping. Sally asks, "So what's going on? How's work treating you?"

Billy has a really good work story to tell and he begins to tell it, starts to really get into it when someone else joins them, jumps in with some kind of declaration, maybe news of a new baby, or a story about Newt, a joke.

Sally turns from Billy to the new arrival because she hasn't got much choice, or doesn't see a choice, and that's the end of Billy's story.

We would call this an interruption, and interruptions are bad, everyone knows this. In the process of interrupting, the interrupter is supposed to catch himself and say, "My bad! I'm so sorry! I interrupted! You first. Finish what you were saying."

But that doesn't usually happen, maybe because people are high in these situations, or nervous. If Sally had finer social skill, she would somehow get the microphone back to Billy, or at least return her personal attention to his story.

She could gently inform the one who has interrupted, "Hold on, Billy's telling a story, let him finish."

Or she could wait out the speaker, then get back to Billy. "You were telling me about something when we were interrupted." Delicious, delightful social skill. Better than the guac.

Why is it so important? Why is this process considered social skill, on par with refraining from interrupting?

Because it puts Billy back in the room.

3. Gave It to You

I walk through the front door after a long day's work singing, belting, "I got chills electrifying. And I'm losing control, . . . ." It's from that song, You're the One That I Want from the musical, Grease.

My kid gets up to greet me. He's a young adult, he should. He says, "Do these songs just run through your head all day long?"

Seems like it. But give it to someone, and you don't have it anymore. No one knows why.

4. You Is Kind, You Is Smart, You Is Important

My mother asks me if I want to see The Help. It's playing in her building and she fell asleep when they took her to the theater to see it a few months ago, channeling my father. This is a second chance. She'll go without me, of course, but it might be fun, seeing it together.

Things are often more fun in twos.

I'm pretty sure I don't want to go. I don't like sitting more than I have to sit. It is an occupational hazard, sitting too much, hard on the back muscles. And there's so much to do. But the book was great, and the movie has to be a feel good movie. Why turn down a free one of those?

Abileen, the "colored" maid, raises the children of her rich white employers. These women tend to abdicate the job of parenting to their maids. Worse, they criticize their children mercilessly for being children, behaving like children, being messy, inappropriate, and honest.

Abileen uses persuasion, positive messaging, as her parenting style. She has her little girl repeat after her, You Is Kind, You Is Smart, You Is Important. (The green You Is Kind. . .etc., links you to this priceless scene.)

I is kind, I is smart, I is important, repeats the little girl.

I think of a thousand patients who didn't have anyone like Abileen in their lives and it makes me want to scream.


5. Less Holy Matrimony

Apparently there's a PEW poll (like Gallup, survey research) that is showing fewer Americans are getting married.

In 1960, 72% of all adults ages 18 and older were married; today just 51% are, a record low.

Sustaining marriage does seem like an impossible goal for many people, and getting married, a risk so many just won't take.

And who can blame them? It's so hard to accept people for who they are, to love them anyway.  Love can be a thankless job.

But I look around my mother's retirement community and the loneliness is palpable. It's like a college residence hall, except that most of the rooms are singles, not doubles.

But there are a few couples, and they touch one another. Publicly. They may have issues, maybe old issues, but they have one another, and they're grateful for that. When bingo is over, they leave together.



6. Tebowing

I just loved it when I heard that Tim Tebow gets down on one knee after playing football, gives thanks to the Old Mighty. (For those of you who are new here, this is how my grandfather of blessed memory, an immigrant who taught himself to speak and read English at the age of 16, referred to God.)

Tebowing has come to mean praying on one knee, but not just praying, taking the pose in strange places under unusual circumstances.

What's interesting about this is that in Israel you see people praying all of the time, true, not on bended knee, but everywhere, especially on buses and in airports, mumbling while staring into prayer books written in a funny language. So Tim didn't make it up, but he's still pretty marvelous.

The thing that struck me about the Tim Tebow story (Saturday's Wall Street Journal, all about the good deeds he's done, his charity) is that people are really hoping he'll fail, that he'll start to lose games for Denver. They want him to fail, want to see how he behaves when he loses, if he'll lose his faith, starts using drugs, or is caught with his pants down. Clearly unclear on the concept, his detractors.

Happy holidays everyone, no matter what your language.

therapydoc

Behavioral Zen

I’m having lunch with one of my married sons and his wife, and they tell me that they visited my mother. “You should see her zipping down the halls in that new walker! Wow! It’s scary!” cries Cham.

“Is that thing even safe?” asks my son. He picked up his grandmother’s worry gene.

Well, we hope so.

“She sure seems to love it,” his wife adds.

Yes and no. It is snazzy, and it is red, and she does love it, to a degree. The silver one they sent with her from the hospital last year has two gliders instead of a back set of wheels (the red one is a 4-wheeler) and the gliders slow her down.

The physical therapist calls the silver one the very best, however, because there are so many ways to arrange the wheels, the height.  You can even exchange the gliders for wheels. One visit with a physical therapist or an occupational therapist, and your whole way of looking at things changes. These people are geniuses.

THE STORY

FD and I took Mom to a wedding tonight. Dear friends of ours married off a daughter to a wonderful young man, and seeing people we haven't seen in many, many years, makes me delirious. My mother had a great time, we all did, and I took her up to her apartment in her independent living facility afterward.

On the way up she tells me the many different things she had worried about before the wedding, and how none of her fears materialized.  (Crazy, I know.)  "They seemed so happy to see me!"

Well, yeah. 

As she settled into her nighttime rituals, I noticed she didn’t use either of her walkers. Not the trusty silver one with the gliders, not the new red one with four wheels.

“This is an accident waiting to happen,” I spit out. “They told you that you have to use your walker ALL of the time.”

“I don't want to become dependent,” she tells me. End of the matter.

Dependency is bad.

“It’s not like taking drugs. It’s good to have one or two of these things to depend upon.”

She gives me that look, as in, Well, some of us disagree.

“Would you rather be dependent upon a caregiver? Because all it takes is one good fall and this independence thing is over, a thing of the past.  Maybe for good.”

She looks sad. I don’t want to turn a wonderful, warm, intimate evening with friends into a sad night. Bubble bursting is not our thing. But I can't help myself and continue.

“Think of it this way. Has your doctor told you , 'S.  You should really try not to use that walker. Use it for emergencies, or when you go out, maybe, but it is better to avoid using it all the time because you might become dependent upon it.'
Has any health care professional ever told you this?”

She shakes her head.

“Nu?” I ask. (Nu, rhymes with Jew, Yiddish for So, already? or maybe What do you say to that?)

We're on a roll here.

“They all say, as a matter of fact, Keep it close to you. You need it. At your age, you need it. Everyone expects you to have one. No one expects you to still be here, pooh, pooh, pooh, at your age, and not have a set of wheels.”

She looks at me incredulously, for only six months ago she surrendered the car keys.  The rant goes on.

“Think of it as a part of you. Think of yourself and the walker as one. It is an extension of you, the walker. You and the walker, one person.  My walker, myself.”

No expression. Blank.  No idea if she’s copping to this. I turn from her to set up her medicines for the week, she gets on pajamas. When I finish she is standing behind me. She’s holding onto the silver one.

therapydoc

To the New Decade

Cuz we're all sick of the last one.

FD likes to go over the events of the year in December, has been obsessing about this for about a week. Between the two of us, without a blog to record them (for this is not that kind of blog), we try to remember what has happened to us and to the people we know. It's a long list of remembers.

I've just come from my mother's house, refreshed from a nap on her sofa. The day has started, as usual, at nine in the office, but I cut my afternoon hours to go to the funeral of a close friend, an expected passing. In our community it is tradition, following the service, to follow the mais, the dead person, to the grave, literally walk behind the casket. These days bodies are flown to different destinations, different cities, even countries. So we walk behind the hearse in the cold, the rain, whatever the weather, to say goodbye.



Our friend wasn't a rabbi, he was just a regular guy, but special of course, to us.

The rabbis of two synagogues eulogized David, spoke of his faith and acceptance of disease, this gorgeous, positive man, his sweet-disposition, how he and his family moved to Chicago thirteen years ago. He helped build two synagogues, two renovations of older buildings, one edifice now more beautiful than the next.

The rabbis of each shul claim him. It wasn't with money, although I could be wrong, but surely with time, that he gave of himself. Everything takes time, all worthy projects. They speak of him in one of the new synagogues, and after the speeches, we follow our friend, on foot, to the next.

It's really cold, and me being a cold kind of person anyway, cold-intolerant, wearing a short, fall jacket, could easily opt out of the march down the busy street, but it doesn't feel like an option. Maybe reading the stories from the Holocaust, the survivor tales, has changed me. I make an association, cold is an obstacle, nothing more or less, and of course, this isn't Poland, dead of winter, 1942. And that awful awareness of the elements and the coldness of death, too, disappear.

I meet up with FD at the destination, and he greets me with, "I felt I had to walk, even though it's really cold; that it was an honor to accompany him." Right there with you, dear.

We walk together to the car in no particular hurry and he continues, "Let's stay together the whole day. I won't go back to the office. I'll go with you, wherever you're going." He knows that I'm picking up my mother, taking her to visit my father in the hospital, but there are errands, things to do. The day is full like every other day.

"Sometimes," he says, as we buckle ourselves in, "I think you don't need this kind of thing as much as me, just being together, that I'm not so necessary."

Such bait. I reassure, explain that this isn't so, and why. You might call this emotional intimacy.

We swing over to the grocery store to pick up an anniversary cake for my parents. I blank on the year, how long they're married, but have the number 64 in my head (wrong), so I tell the woman behind the counter, "Just write on the cake . . ."

Mom & Dad, 64?

FD picks up champagne and sparkling grape juice, not sure if they'll let my father have a little champagne or not, and flowers, tulips. I pick out some cards, one from us, one from my mother to my father, forgetting to buy one from my father to my mother. Neither of them is in a position to buy the other anything.


We pick up Mom at her house. She's waiting at the front door. She doesn't know we're going to have a little party in the hospital room to celebrate her anniversary. FD and I are very excited.

Dad is sitting up in a chair, dressed. His hair is getting kind of long, in the hospital eight days. He's happy for the company but short of breath, six words to a breath, at most, sounds a little like the Godfather. He suggests, as we begin to sign the cards in front of him, that we get some post-its, write on these so we can recycle the cards.

You see, everyone's green these days.

But the cards are good, spot on, and we save them, so we sign them and hand them over. We don't stay long because he has work to do, it is time for rehab and if he isn't rehabbed, then what is he doing here, anyway? We want to keep him out of the hospital, but we're in no hurry. Every new decision is stressful. It's hard on my mother to shlep here every day. And she's lonely living without him, vulnerable, too.

It isn't easy staying awake on the drive back to the house, but I can't say this, of course. I flop on her sofa, asleep before I've even closed my eyes. While I nap she brushes off an old winter dress coat of hers because I've complained about being cold in my jacket, and haven't bought a new coat for myself in twenty years.

I wake up in a start and eventually ask FD. "What must it be like for her to see me age like this, crash on her couch like I just did? I was out for an hour!"

"We see our kids getting older," he philosophizes.

Not the same. Anyway. We start recollecting, without a blog, the year.

There have been other friends who are now gone, young people, at least we think so, one who left us at 50, suffering in silence, telling no one about her disease. A teacher. We call teachers in our community, stars. These are our stars. We lost a star.

Only about five weeks ago we lost another dear friend to a heart attack, 62. Playing raquetball. We escorted his body to the cargo hangar at the airport; he had a ticket to Israel for burial in the holy land. His mother, already there, reportedly said,
"I can accept it. I just can't believe it."

The week after that we heard that yet another member of the community had passed away in Spain, and the Spanish authorities want to embalm the body, not a Jewish tradition, unless the community, the family, comes up with $70,000 for transport on a private jet. Somehow this money is found. But an important person talks to another important person and the commercial airliner takes the body, as is.

And so it goes. Two of my uncles leave us, one younger than my father, one older.

People lose jobs, people lose lives, and we understand that 25% of all Americans are in danger of losing their homes. We watch, experience these statistics like everyone else, and worry.

Meanwhile, (K"H*) my brother-in-law has a new lease on life, a new kidney, not an easy find in your sixties, and my father, although gasping for breath, has a fistula and with the help of dialysis, could live for many more years. My grandson, an infant, has a heart that is whole. The surgeon who sewed it up is a doctor without borders who does this surgery on 13 year olds in impoverished villages, children who have not, until their surgery, lived a not-blue day in their lives.

We've had many new babies in the family, and marriages.

We have this idea, in my culture, that it's all decided, everything that happens to everyone in the world is decided on the Jewish New Year, a holiday that rolls around in September or October, depending upon the lunar cycle. We take off time for the holidays, look deeply into ourselves, our behavior, the things we've done, that which we haven't done, and we apologize, mainly to one another, for our greatest deficits, which we feel are communal, social. Then, ten days later, we fast for twenty-five hours, face our King, own up to our garbage, vow to do better, and hope for the best.

But since everyone else reviews their year at the end of December, some of us do this, too. We look back to look forward, as the snow falls and the temperatures drop into the single digits.

And it's New Years.

To you and yours, may it be happy, healthy, safe, and full of love,

therapydoc

*K"H means, basically, the evil eye should leave you alone.

The Denial of Aging

We joke that I'm a little accident prone. I always say that it's a statistical thing. If a person is active, there are more opportunities for accidents. But for awhile now, in my mind, I've wondered if it's really the denial of aging.

And the denial is either genetic, or human nature, or maybe some of us learn to be this way from our fathers and our mothers. Either way, I have to wonder if it's one of those transgenerational things.

The Stories

(1)

It rained last Thursday, but the day started out sunny so I stole that window of time and rode my bike to work. It was worth it, as it always is. Only a three mile ride, the exercise wakes me up (and the anxiety, you have to make sure you don't get killed, riding a bike). And there's no more beautiful city than Chicago in the sunshine.

But of course, by evening the rain came in as predicted. I had a text at 6:00 from FD.

Can I pick you up?

Well, sure. I left the bike at the office, hopped into his car.

Then Friday I took the car, saw patients. When I finished for the day, I walked the bicycle outside to stick it in the trunk. This is a drill. I've done it a thousand times, lifted the old ten-speed, placed it inside, just right. The move is unconscious. We don't have a van so the procedure does take a certain panache.

Left hand beneath the bicycle, right lifting from above, the bike slides in as usual. As I remove my left hand, the bike drops unexpectedly. My reaction is what one might expect, #!@#$%&#, the list of expletives exhaustive.

I know that this is no ordinary boo boo, and that FD is there for me, but at this hour of the day on a Friday I also know he's working like a madman to finish up and get going, and I'm on my way to pick him up, anyway. So I don't call him.

But it hurts like never before. Maybe childbirth. I don't know. The ski accident doesn't compare. I get scared, look at the hand. I'm a righty, so I'm thinking, this isn't the end of my life. Be a big girl. Get to a 7-11 and get a cup of ice. Looks like only one finger, maybe two are suffering the damage for everyone.

There's a line at 7-11. It's Free Slurpy day. I get a cup of ice, stick Fing in and take it out pretty quick. This isn't working out, it's too painful. Good soldier, I put it back in, keep it there. A couple of religious kids are in front of me, trying not to stare. As one of them checks out I say to the clerk, "I just have a cup of ice." He smiles and waves me away, like, what a nut, paying for ice. But there's a cup here.

I pick up FD who resolutely scolds me. "Why didn't you call me?! You don't ice digits! You can cause an infarct, break a blood vessel, ala frost bite."

"Take the wheel and shut up," I say, always the grateful and pleasant patient.

He ha scolded gently, of course.

So the color kept our interest, first black, then eggplant. The pain dissipated in a couple of hours and in 24 Fing wasn't anything but a curiosity. Three days later it's no longer numb, so maybe it's all good. It bends. No break. Just a smashed digit, maybe you noticed, didn't stop me from blogging the other day.

(2)

Then Sunday I go to visit my parents after work with Little One. He's home and has a pre-college engineering internship, a plum that he deserves because he bothered to apply. He's probably got some engineering genetics. FD tinkers, and my father, without a college education, became a chief engineer on a ship in the Navy. Everyone came to him, all of the other engineers, when they couldn't figure things out. All this because he couldn't speak English and went to Crane Tech, instead of a typical liberal arts high school.

I've heard his stories a thousand times. Ordinarily on a visit like this, my father would have regaled my son with one or two of them. But today he's working on the water. The bathroom sink has a drip.

My father built his house in the burbs, designed it. He drew up the blueprints, and served as contractor on the job, chief architect, chief engineer. He built my grandparents' house, too. When he bought land, he made sure it was on the high ground. So we never flooded. Other people did, we didn't.

These are things engineers think about.

Anyway, Little One and I are in on a water crisis. Dad can't turn off the water in the bathroom, the valves and the pipes are too tight. He has to go into the basement to turn off the main valve and his heart's not so good and my mother has arthritis. You can see where this is going. He's out of breath but he's not giving in.

We offer to help, so he takes Little One downstairs and they turn off the water. Turn on the water. Turn off the water. All because there's a drip in the bathroom and the valve under the sink is stuck and he can't take things apart while the water's running, and when it's not, the hardware doesn't cooperate.

The drip is driving my parents crazy. I think I posted about bathroom drips on the My Cousin Vinnie review. The movie has a good scene, a good example of healthy marital conflict. You have to see that movie just for the drip scene alone.

At some point Dad has to sit down and catch his breath. We're sitting around the kitchen table picking at cashews and almonds, and I suggest my plumber. Dad is predictably miffed. You use your plumber.

Foot out of mouth. He settles down, tells a few stories. The two men discuss cosigns and me and mom gossip a little.

We get ready to go and Dad says, "Leave me the name of that plumber." I find Paul under Plumber in my contact list and jot the number down for him.

"FD could help you, too," I offer.

"He's got no time for this. I can do it myself."

"Okay."

But that valve, I guarantee, is 58 years old if it's a day. So maybe he'll have to call the plumber, I'm thinking. We take off. Little One has to go to a barbecue. Life goes on.

Monday evening I call the house. Dad answers. He's really cheerful.

"Is the water fixed?" I ask.

"Huh?"

"The water. The drip. Is it fixed?"

"Oh yes!"

"What did you do, take the faucet apart and put it back together again?"

"Exactly. I had to make a part, so that's what I did. That faucet was old. They don't make them anymore, you know. So I had to improvise. I went down to the basement, found a bigger part and threaded it and it works just fine now. Good as new."

"You're amazing." And with that, my chin hits a button and we're disconnected.

Mom calls me back. This is a long conversation for me and Dad. We don't want to push it.

"So you have water again and he fixed it! That's great," I exclaim.

"Yes," she says proudly. "He should have called a plumber, but you know him. He has to do everything himself. Your father sat at the table, exhausted, with his head in his hands. He'd been working on this all day, and he was so tired. He said, 'I can't do it.' I've never seen him give up on anything. I felt so bad for him.

"And then he brightened up and said, 'Do you have any string?' And I said 'No, but I have thread,' and he said, 'Lemme' see.'

"So he took the thread and played around with something in the basement, came upstairs and fixed it. Quite a guy, your father. Of course, I had to be there all day to support him, you know, couldn't just walk away*. And I couldn't do anything without water. It was terrible."

Now ordinarily, I would say that he's off his rocker, my father, that he could have had a heart attack (G-d forbid) and had no business working on a plumbing job at 87, almost 88 years old.

But I see the value in this, don't you? There's real value to proving you've still got it, you can still do it, even if it's painful.

For some people, the No pain, No gain thing is a life force, something that just won't quit. The drive in the person is the person, and it won't quit.

So why in the world, I ask myself, would I?

copyright 2008, therapydoc

*This is what I call holding the flashlight.