Our New Adolescence

An adolescence is a sudden burst of growth, after which we find that we are different enough from our former selves to require a period of adjustment. When doctors or police refer to “adolescents,” they mean teenagers, but that’s not the only adolescence. We all go through a few that are well observed by medical professionals and a couple more on our own personal schedules. They can be difficult.

Changes overtake us as we get older, and the entire thing can be confusing. There’s a dynamic at work that will be familiar to anyone who has raised children. You spend a year or two getting the hang of handling a baby. Then the baby is gone, and you must learn to take care of a toddler. After that, you need to discover the comforts and dangers of being responsible for a four or five year old. The point being that none of this prepares you for the pleasures and dangers of having a six or seven year old on your hands. At each stage, you must master a new skill-set, and when that stage is complete you are thrown back into ignorance by circumstances. Our own lives come in a very similar pattern.

In my case, right now, I wonder what exactly is causing that new pain in my left shoulder. Is it a late onset of rheumatoid arthritis? That would be terrible. Is my new mattress too hard? Is it a reappearance of an injury-based discomfort that was caused when I was about thirty-years-old at a job that required repeated impact shocks to my shoulders? That pair of injuries was never diagnosed, even though my shoulders hurt more or less for over ten years. Is it part of what the doctors characterize as the normal degenerative changes of osteoarthritis? What is the whole range of things that it could be?

I’ve been putting off seeking a medical opinion on the matter, but I suppose that I should go to see an orthopedist. It has been a year now, and it’s getting more annoying. There’s no sense in waiting, really. X-rays and exams are cheap where I live. And what’s the harm of asking? It might even be something that shows up clearly in x-rays and could be dealt with in a straightforward manner, perhaps arthroscopically. Who knows?

That’s the real point, isn’t it? “Who knows?” Certainly I don’t know. But I know that sleeping exclusively on my right side is not going to work out in the long run, and waiting around for miracles is never a good plan of action. So that’s it, then, go to the hospital and see an orthopedist.

Having learned the intricacies of many of life’s phases already, I must now master a new set of variables. I, along with many of my fellow Baby Boomers, am in a new adolescence. My current stage of life could be called, “officially old but not yet decrepit.” I have resolved to keep my happy-face on. After all, it’s only pain, time, confusion, embarrassment and money. Life has worse things than those to throw at us. And that’s the real point: if the worst isn’t happening yet, don’t start to complain! It could be much worse, and it probably will be much worse before long. I must enjoy myself while I still can, or be condemned as an ungrateful wretch.

That was fun! Writing things out really does enhance understanding. 

The Divorce

Something is happening, but what is it?  In science and mathematics, something that has happened can be checked and proven.  What has happened can be known.  Mechanical devices can be reverse engineered and what they do and how they work may be discovered and understood.  Two plus two is four; devices work or they don’t.  It is all very straightforward and objective.  When something happens to a human being, however, it is, by definition, subjective.  What? Why? How?  Nothing is ever clear; nothing can be proven.

Something is happening to me.  I can feel it all weaving its new reality around me, but what it is, and why, and how, are questions that I cannot answer with any certainty. 

I am in the process of getting a divorce from my wife of forty-four years.  For most of that time I thought that it was a fine marriage.  We seemed to get along okay, it usually appeared that we were meeting each other’s emotional needs.  I can say, with all honesty, that even close to the end I would wake up and watch her sleeping, and think with wonder what great luck had brought me to her side. We raised two very fine children, very successful organisms, healthy, relatively well adjusted, now grown men not without success in the affairs of society, both well-loved, morally upright, and very respectable.  Why should we get divorced at all, much less this close to retirement? 

That inquiry would start out, Roshamon style, with two distinct points of view.  And like in that great Japanese movie, the resulting stories would be very different depending on the speaker.  Different people tend to spin stories in different directions, to meet their own requirements of emotion, ego, pride or shame.  Me, I don’t even like to think about it.  Starting down that road it all starts very quickly to look like placing blame, and I don’t see any profit in it.  Nothing will ever change the fact that my family is my family.  Anything that I can do to keep us getting along with each other as well as possible would only tend to help me.  Not just me, wouldn’t that be better for everybody? 

My wife and I have always had very different points of view about our marriage, so it’s no surprise to me that we should find differences of opinion about what is happening now.  Over the years we engaged in marriage counseling two different times, the first after a few years of marriage and the other after about ten or eleven years.  On both of these occasions we were asked what we thought was wrong.  On both occasions I didn’t feel like much was wrong at all, while my wife could go on and on about what was wrong and acted like I was either delusional or in denial.  At this point I don’t even want to know what she thinks, or what she tells her friends and family, or what she tells herself.  What good could come of knowing?  And no discussion is possible. 

I don’t like to think about it, but I do think about it.  The results, so far, have not been encouraging.  There is a problem that is similar, but separate from the Roshamon problem.  Most of us do not remember things as they happened, for one thing.  And most of us tend to spin reality to suit our own needs, emotionally etc.  Selective memory is a real problem.  Then there are the lies that we tell ourselves, a form of self-preservation.  And forget about explaining any emotional event to someone else, that feat is beyond the power of any human being.  It is true that my name is in the Petitioner spot on the divorce papers, so one could be forgiven to think that it was my idea, but I don’t believe that I am the engine of destruction here.  I believe that I filed because I was driven to it.  Whether this was the result of real events or suppositions that occurred in my mind or the mind of someone else, I'll never be too sure.

Checking down the list of verifiable facts it is very clear to me that divorce is my best, if not my only option.  It all seems very clear to me that it was my wife who decided that we can’t possibly live together any more.  There are quotes in e-mails, in very direct, unambiguous language, some quite cruel.  I was excluded from the house, abandoned to my fate as it were.  "Make your own plans, I can't take the doom and gloom anymore." That was six years pre-filing, and at no point was I ever invited back, never was an apology offered to me, she never showed any sign of having changed her mind.  My wife began to refer to our house as her house, and so on down the line.  Any time I attempted to address any substantive issue between us in e-mail or in person the result was an angry reply or a long silence followed by an e-mail about the weather, or a "how about them Dodgers?"  Cars were bought and sold, the property was improved at great expense of bank money, all with no input from me, I was simply never informed of any of it.  It’s true that there had never been anything like joint management and control of community assets in our marriage, so this was nothing in the way of a surprise, it was nothing new.  It had always been her way or the highway.  Only the kick-out order was new.

My wife maintains that she doesn't want us to get divorced.  Since she does this with no accompanying indication that she wishes us to resume our lives together I must assume that she really wishes to be rid of me while continuing her management and control of our community property.  It is, in any case, a matter that is now in the category of "already happened."  It's a little late to start rearranging the deck chairs.  

The above is my basic understanding of what is happening, but it’s not the last word.  For me, there never is any last word.  My own thoughts, like digitally produced music and films, are subject to constant revision.  Even worse, I have a tendency to blame myself whenever something goes wrong.  This is a very old tendency, extending well into childhood.  In my childhood family, we experienced abandonment issues (my father was rarely at home, preferring his work environment which included extensive travel) and mental health issues (my mother, God rest her soul, don’t cry for her, death was all she ever wanted).  Our house was never a happy place.  I somehow became convinced that they were a nice family, the three of them, my father, my mother and my sister, and that I just ruined the picture.  Why would anyone think that?  It’s strange, isn’t it?  Was I right, or wrong, or merely confused?  Was it some fault of mine, or theirs?  (Not my sister’s, of course.)  Should I have done anything differently?  Should someone have intervened?  Who would that have been?  Oh, these questions spin out of control very quickly, do they not? 

I have a tendency to be very hard on myself in general.  So if I consider the reasons that my wife would want to be rid of me (without really being rid of me) I usually come to the conclusion that she’s right to feel that way.  I even wonder how the divorce could be my fault without my even knowing it.  My new situation is not entirely unpleasant.  Did I manufacture the entire thing for personal advantage?  How is my selective memory affecting my actions? 

I don’t believe that we construct our own reality, because the involvement of fate is too great for that.  But maybe we construct our own understanding of it.  Telling ourselves convenient lies wouldn’t be the half of it, if the truth were known. 

So I know what’s happening, I’m getting divorced.  But I’ll be land-damned if I am really sure why or how this is happening to me.  

So, What Is Fred Good At?

I like to do laundry, but I'm not very good at it.  I have dingy whites.

I like doing dishes, because it is a very clear cut task.  When there are dishes in the sink, you wash them; when there are no more dishes, you are done.  Men are good at tasks like that.

I think that I am a pretty good writer.  I'm fast, I'll say that.  The below two thousand words about Navy boot camp took me two and a half hours.  I never strive for perfection, just some clarity and organization, with decent grammar.  I do not pursue serious writing, because I am afraid that I would produce something that I thought was good.  In that case the disappointment of it never being published would kill me, like that poor John Kennedy Toole.  I'm at least as depressed as him.  

I am very good at vacuuming.  I do not, at this moment, have any rugs, nor do I have a vacuum cleaner.  There's a vent in my bathroom that could use a DustBuster, but I don't have one of those either.  I'm waiting for inspiration regarding alternatives.

I am not good at dusting, I don't think any man is.  When is it time to dust?  When is the dusting finished?  It's confusing. 

I used to think that I was a good friend, but I don't think so anymore.  I suppose that the value judgment would best be left to others in any case.  I love having friends, and I have always striven to be a good friend to them.  I take full responsibility for any failures in the arena of friendship.  There have been failures.

I am a good driver.  My evidence for this is that I have survived all of the ridiculous chances that I took going way too fast on mountain roads in cars and on motorcycles. 

I tried to be a good son, but I was treated as a disappointment.  Eventually I joined my parents in that  opinion.  I'd rather have been a good father anyway, but I don't think I was, not particularly.  I was an okay father.  I know that I was not a good brother.  Better as an adult brother, I think.

I was not a good husband.  Just ask my (soon-to-be-ex) wife.  

I rather enjoy teaching, and I think that I'm good at it, but I'm not ambitious.  A couple of small classes per week is fine with me.  There will never be any acclaim, but I'm okay with that.  What I do pays the bills.

I'm a pretty good public speaker, and I don't mind speaking to groups.  I don't care how many people are in the audience, it really doesn't matter.  I'd do a half an hour for a thousand people at the drop of a hat with only time to shave and get dressed.  Or an hour, or two hours,  it's not so hard.  I'm glib, I can just get started and go.  Twelve years as a lawyer, and now ten as a teacher, have certainly prepared me for the role.  I'm not looking for the work, but call me if you need a speaker.  I require very little preparation, and I work cheap. 

Don't even ask me if I was a good lawyer.  The statute of limitations never runs on those law suits.

I sit quietly and read as well as anyone who ever lived.  I'm also pretty good at watching TV. 

Just a man, after all.  

The End Game

Knowing people’s ages has always been of interest to me.  Early on it was a question of knowing what a person could do at any certain age.  How old do you need to be before you can do that?  Whenever I went to a baseball game I checked the ages of all of the players in my score card; I recall that Wayne “Red” Garrett (third base) of the Mets was the first player that I ever saw play a major league baseball game that was younger than me at the time.  I felt like I had reached a milestone.

This checking of ages changed character as I got older.  By now it’s more of a question of cataloging the ages at which certain things move from being statistically conceivable to something much more likely.  Things like strokes; Parkinson’s disease; hip replacements; heart attacks; various cancers; Lou Gehrig’s disease; and the very considerable “etc” of such things.  These things begin to seem almost inevitable at some point if we are lucky enough to live through our reckless and accident prone early years. 

So we begin to wonder: how old was that stroke victim?  A lot older than we are, it is to be hoped.  We are seeking evidence that we have a few good years left in us.  If the math is right it provides us, at best, with a false hope, but even a false hope is some comfort.  Many of us begin to check the obituaries with greater interest as time goes on.  For those poor souls, the record has been cut in stone, and we seek whatever statistical comfort that we may find. 

I was interested in the process of getting older even before I knew about getting old.  I’m so old now that I am becoming curious about the direction that all of this mess is pointing to. 

The Process Of Dying  

I have always counseled that we do not die all at once.  Dying is a process that for most of us begins around the age of forty.  Prior to age forty (or so) we are on the flood tide, strong muscles, strong immune systems, it’s all systems go, you might as well smoke cigarettes.  After forty everything begins to wear out, slowly at first, almost imperceptibly if we are lucky.  You may begin to notice little things.  I recall the first time I ran up some stairs and felt my jowls move up and down.  I was about forty-four.  Now, of course, the idea of running up stairs is itself out of the question.  You’d hear my knees go “pop” a mile away. 

By age fifty, the message is clear, something is happening.  For a fifty year old, even playing a game of soft ball is a challenge.  For purposes of this essay, I’m going to leave it at the mention of soft ball.  To discuss the effects of aging on sexual function would be too depressing. 

When I was about fifty a lawyer friend of mine turned thirty-eight, and he was not happy about it.  He felt old.  I told him that he was actually quite young, and that he should enjoy it while he could.  “I’d pay good money to be thirty-eight again for just one weekend,” I said. 

The End Game

The game becomes very one-sided at the end.  The team in the black uniforms always wins.  It’s like a game of Three Card Monte, in the end we all realize that there is no queen to be found.  

Not all end games are the same.  Consider chess.  For some the end comes suddenly, with complete surprise, like that fellow who lost “The Great Game” to Paul Morphy.  He never saw what hit him.  For others, it’s more like a bishop and a knight chasing a king around the board for dozens of moves.  The process can be inevitable and yet strangely interminable. 

Some of us are definitely luckier than others, and this is not the kind of luck that you can manufacture in advance, although many people try.  Poor Andy Kaufman was very careful in life, no smoking, no drinking, he ate only health foods.  Struck down, he was, by lung cancer at about thirty-eight.  Those cancer deaths can really stretch out too, not very lucky at all, and no return on Andy’s investment. 

My Aunt Mary, on the other hand, had the greatest result possible, the Royal Flush in Spades of end life possibilities, and almost as rare as that poker hand.  The end came when she was eighty-five, an unanticipated heart attack in her sleep.  If she suffered momentary distress there was no evidence of it.  Very lucky indeed, healthy to the end (in a manner of speaking).  She had never done anything to invest in this result either, hers had never been a life of forbearance.   She was a fan of cruises right up to the end.  One time I asked her if she was afraid to come down with one of the strange maladies that seemed like frequent problems on cruises.  “Oh no,” she said, “not me, I never drink anything but scotch.”  She figured that the problem was the water, and she took the W.C. Fields approach to drinking water.  (“I’m thirsty, not dirty.”)

The Reason I Bring This Up

As I sit here today, all of this is much on my mind.  A close friend of mine is in the final stages of dying from breast cancer.  She’s only fifty, and she felt that first telltale lump eight years ago. 

She has always been a tough woman in many ways.  She had three older brothers growing up, and she mostly played with the boys of the neighborhood.  She played games with them, she climbed trees with them, and she fought with all of them too.  She was always a strong, athletic and very attractive girl.  She's very tough minded, even now she has a will to live that you can easily see from a distance.

This month will probably be it, and it’s definitely safe to cross her off the Christmas card list.  It’s terrible to see.  I’ve never been this close to the process before.  This time I’m on the caretaker team.  My job allows me some time to do good deeds, although I rarely avail myself.  This time it’s personal, so I’m on the team.  She’s at home, hospice care and nursing homes are very rare and very, very expensive in Thailand.  It’s more of a die-at-home kind of place.  So I’m learning things.

When the default position of the patient’s eyes is rolled back in the head; when the eyes begin to lose their focus and their shine; when they begin to operate independently of one another; these are very bad signs.  When the patient’s voice becomes the faintest croak bearing little or no indication of the words that were intended, that is a bad sign.  There are many other physical signs that I could mention, but I won’t right now, as a matter of delicacy.  Let’s afford the woman some dignity. 

Did I say “tough minded?”  She was beginning to suspect that she wouldn’t live out the month so she told her family to schedule her funeral about a week from now, WHILE SHE IS STILL ALIVE.  She has arranged to have her body donated to the teaching hospital of Chulalongkorn University.  She wants them to get it immediately upon her death, so everything is fresh.  She’s afraid that most of it is kind of a wreck by now, but maybe somebody is out there waiting for her corneas.

 

Three Cheers

So let’s hear it for my brave friend.  Three cheers and a fair-thee-well.  We’ll all be joining you soon, sweetie, but not too soon I hope.  “For whom the bell tolls,” indeed.  My friends, you may be sure that when we cry at funerals , we cry for ourselves. 

“It tolls for thee.”   

The Decision Of The Walter Lippmanns

According to an interview in The Paris Review long ago, Gore Vidal encountered the Walter Lippmanns one time and found them to be in a particularly good mood. When he inquired as to the source of their euphoria, Mrs. Lippmann replied, “because we have decided that we shall never go to Japan.” She described the decision as “such a relief!”

I know somewhat of which Mrs. Lippmann speaks. A decision that has been up in the air for some time can be a debilitating burden. Finalizing a decision can be liberating, especially if the resolution reduces the level of effort that is required to proceed.

For example, I’m sure that I would profit from a clear decision never to finish the novel that I started five years ago. I wrote almost half of a first draft, about 45,000 words. Some of the chapters were re-written and looked pretty good; others were rough.

It was, maybe it still is, a labor of love. I have noticed something in my life that I believe most people overlook: when people are judged by the criteria that society generally applies, many good people may be judged to be very bad, and many bad people may be judged to be very good. I’m not speaking personally here, but I have seen this misguided logic in action.

Another point that I find worth illuminating is that my generation was subjected to pressures that were greater than many of us could stand. Society back in the Sixties and Seventies really had its panties in a twist, and many of us felt less than welcome. Many teenagers just decided to opt out. Not like the Hippies, with their “turn on; tune in; drop out,” although the ones who opted out of society did turn on. This was more of a silent sinking beneath the surface of ordinary reality. No tuning in was involved, more of a tuning out really. I’m not sure that this phenomenon has been adequately examined by the artistic temperaments of our times.

To me, this whole thing has the makings of a good story, or several.

Time will tell if I decide to finish the thing. Novels are such a huge amount of work that I’m surprised that any of them are ever finished. It might be worth it though. Who knows? Maybe a hundred people would read it.

If I ever do decide that I shall never finish it, I’m sure that I’ll feel a sense of relief very similar to that of the Lippmanns regarding Japan.