Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

I came across my New Year’s musings from 2017. Let’s take a look, shall we, and see if there might be a little evergreen peaking through the soil of 2020 into 2021…

Chief Justice John Roberts gave a commencement speech to a group of 9th graders this year in which he wished them “bad luck”. Now, lest you think ill of the Chief Justice, that he was being churlish and mean-spirited, what he meant was that he wished that these young people would experience some degree of hardship in their youth so that they would develop tactics to persevere as adults when those same hardships inevitably arose.

“I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal, because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. I hope that you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life, and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.

And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so that you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you have just enough pain to learn compassion.”

My hope for each of you is encapsulated in Justice Roberts’ conclusion: I hope that you will have the ability to see the message in any of your misfortunes, and that you will express appreciation for the people who help you overcome them.

Let me leave 2017 with a final thought, inspired by Ben Reiter’s review of the movie “I, Tonya”. “Each of us, “I, Tonya” suggests, is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done–or, in Tonya’s case, the worst thing she might have done.” In our present days of instantly available and infinitely scalable opinion, we should add what someone says we did.

Let us, each of us, resolve that in 2018 we will look first to that which is good about each other, and endeavor to see that each of us is more like the best thing we’ve ever done than not.

2021 me is back. What do you think? For me it seems as though our poor children have gotten a lifetime’s worth of Chief Justice Roberts’ wishes this year, wouldn’t you say? Still, my wish in 2017 is, indeed, evergreen: see and appreciate those who helped, especially those who did so without being asked.

The year 2020 seemed so very hard while we were in the midst of living it. For those who became ill, who lost loved ones, it can only be the worst year ever. But for the rest of us, those who survived, when we look back we will likely see things gained as much as we see things lost. At least I hope that’s the case. All of those trips “lost”? They are still there for the taking. You may have learned, as I did, that the trips weren’t really the important part though; it was the company you would have kept on those trips that matter. If you are fortunate you spent 2020 with those same people (I was more with my closest people than not), or if not, are just itching to do pretty much anything, anywhere, just to be with them.

We are, as a people, more like the best thing we’ve ever done than not. Yes, let us go forth into 2021 and eventually out of the shadow of 2020 holding this evergreen thought close to our hearts. May 2021 be the year that you and I meet if we’ve not yet done so, the year that we reunite if we have.

Happy New Year to you all.

I’ll see you Sunday…

1 Snorlax. Appears to be an emerging nickname. For me, from Beth. Snorlax is one of my Man Cub’s Pokemon favs.

Apparently not a term of endearment.

2 “Sham”. Name of the horse who came in second to Secretariat in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.

Imagine spending your entire “career” in the presence of greatness. Forced to compete against perhaps the greatest practitioner of all time in whatever it is you do. This was the fate of poor Sham. I read that his times in both the Derby and the Preakness would have won a majority of those races, ever, and yet they left him simply the best runner-up in history. If thus challenged, no matter what you do, how would you react?

In “Grey’s Anatomy” the drama-driven medical weekly filled with characters with more “extra” than not, the second fiddle neurosurgeon is tagged with a nickname that forever confers and confirms his status: “Shadow Shepherd”. His response? He simply soldiers on. Does his job. Does the best he can. Makes no effort to compete. Others do. The cardiac surgeons, for example, and pretty much all of the pretty young surgical residents (not a hair out of place on a one of them), they compete. Thus far in season 6 no one has won. Kinda like a regular Triple Crown season. They all race on.

And what of Sham? He of greatness with a lower case “g”? He broke just behind Secretariat in the Belmont and was quickly left behind. They say it broke his heart. Uninjured, it looked as if he’d lost the ability to run. The jockeys on the mounts who passed him said he literally was crying out in pain during the race. Crying out in anguish when most horses simply try to cram as much oxygen in and let as little out as they can. That’s what they called it.

He finished dead last, 48 lengths behind, never to race again.

3 Babies. As in Christmas babies. We anxiously await the arrival of our own Christmas baby. The Man Cub and his sister Buggie Bear are blissfully unaware of the upheaval on its way. Yesterday’s due date slogged on by and now we count the hours until our littlest girl makes her grand entrance. She’ll be a Christmas baby, her birthday hard up against the biggest gift giving holiday on earth.

How will she handle that when she is old enough to know?

I’ve told this story at least a couple of times over the years, but “Little L’s” birthday reminds me of a tale of two other Christmas babies. Two boys, as it were, but no matter; it’s the Christmas part that matters. Will she look upon her birthday as the greatest bonus in the history of Christmas? An extra day when only SHE gets a gift? Or will she feel that in some way her special day is lessened in the gifting to others occurring all around it? Somehow lost in other’s joy. And as I’ve grown older I will now also wonder if her reaction to being a Christmas baby will change as she, too, gets older.

This is a tale of two boys, now long-grown men, who were once Christmas babies. On born on Christmas Day itself, the other on Christmas Eve. I don’t think that tiny part made any difference in their stories. Both were as well-loved as their families were capable of loving. One was born into substantial wealth, family intact, the other into biting poverty and a family that would be riven by mental illness. I have no real insight, no eye-witness accounts of how their families dealt with the gifting aspects of the birthday/Christmas continuum, only the stories the boys/men told me. Their parents and siblings may have made a big deal over their birthdays, but then again, they may not.

The boy born into wealth felt somehow cheated. In his mind no one really cared about his birthday. No one acknowledged it. He lived long into adulthood feeling this way; the little boy who felt like no one remembered his birthday lived within the adult man whose success had made him much, much more wealthy than his family had ever been. He is a very hard worker, by all accounts the best boss most of his people ever had. All of his adult success was earned and deserved. And yet each Christmas, for as long as I knew him, he remained at least a little bit sad. He remembered the feeling of not feeling remembered.

My other friend, the boy born into a troubled family that descended into poverty, well, there was hardly ever anything remotely resembling a gift coming his way on either Christmas OR his birthday. Whether arriving on Christmas Eve as a birthday present or under the tree on Christmas morning, any gift that came was a source of pure delight. A surprise of the grandest type, since each year passed with no promise that it would be any easier than the last. He, too, is wildly successful. Also one of the hardest workers I’ve known and widely known as a wonderful man to work for. He has earned generational wealth. His reaction, then and now? He was, and is, truly and genuinely grateful for every gift, large or small, on any occasion.

He remains, to this day, an inspiration; the most grateful human being I’ve ever known.

Is there a lesson for us in this tale of two Christmas babies? Of course there is. A couple, actually. The first, of course, is to try our best to be as grateful as possible for any gifts, large or small, that come our way at any time. Even this year, this Annus Horibli that befell us. We have been gifted many times in many ways from many people. Truly. Almost none of us will ever know the kind of wealth that these two Christmas babies created, but we can know that we can be grateful no matter how much or how little we may have on any given birthday.

And we can think of our Christmas babies just a bit more around their birthdays than our other babies upon theirs, aware that this is a birthday that comes with baggage. We can lift them, be not only co-celebrants but also porters, carrying their bags for them a bit on their day. As I said, I do not know exactly how it went down for either of my Christmas baby friends on their birthdays when they were young. In the end it doesn’t really matter, eh? They are who they are; they feel what they feel. Still, we hold within our hands the ability to give the tiniest, grandest gift of all. In one tiny sentence we can tell them: “I see you. You matter. To me.” Just by saying “Happy Birthday” and nothing else.

Happy Birthday to my friends, the Christmas babies. I can’t wait to meet our “Little L” and wish her a Happy Birthday, too.

I’ll see you next week…

Boy, where did the day get to? What with 10 inches of snow to shovel, presents to open, and grandchildren to entertain (and be entertained by), I guess it’s no surprise that it’s just now, 5:00 somewhere, that I’m finally getting to my keyboard to wish both of you who read my stuff a very Merry Christmas!

It’s been a year, hasn’t it? And yet today (and last night) was just wonderful. There’s nothing like the wonder of a child, a believer, when they see the miracle of a tree surrounded by gift wrapped dreams, eh? Beth and I got that twice. How lucky is that? Our soon-to-be fifth grandchild, a little girl, declined to join us for either Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. The wife of one of my very best friends in the world approves; she flatly states that December 26th is a lousy day for birthing and so she’s calling the 27th and putting all of her markers on that square.

Did I ever tell you how my folks ended up with a quadrennial Christmas rotation among their children for the Christmas Holiday? No matter; Dr. Fauci says I’m elderly now so I’m entitled to telling repeats. Mom’s nose was out of joint because she didn’t receive a “proper” invitation to one of our homes for Christmas. When my younger sister asked whose house she’d visit she said “no one”. Instead she and my Dad would go see the Rockets (which he supposedly had on his bucket list). They would travel by bus, accompanied by all the other parents left behind that Christmas by their kids. My poor sister found herself deep in a hole but continued digging, asking what they would eat for Christmas dinner. “Why, we’ll have a brown bag turkey sandwich. We’ll toast our fellow Christmas refugees on the bus with stale chips washed down with flat Coke.”

And that, my friends, is how my folks ended up in the grand Christmas rotation.

Why tell this story (again) now? Mostly just to be a wise guy. Beth and I are alone at Casa Blanco for dinner tonight. Man, did I over-shop. It’s no one’s fault but mine that I have enough salmon to feed a high school basketball team and no one to share it with. Ok, maybe just the starting 5. But still, all I had to do was ask what the plans were and I would have realized that the blessings of having Christmas Eve dinner with one son and his family, and then spending the entire day with my other son and his were going to be my cup overflowith for the year. Still, if for no other reason than the pure entertainment of sending my Mom a pic, Beth and I will spend a bit of time on Netflix or wherever trying to find a vintage Rockettes video to watch. And send pictures to my kids and my siblings. And a big ol’ love note to my Mom telling her how much I miss her and wish it was my year to have my Mom and Dad here with us to open gifts. Go to Mass. Be wined and dined by our other best friends for the 28th consecutive Christmas night.

Yes, it’s been a year, for sure. And yet, here I am, happy. Blessed. Sharing this sacred day and night with the love of my life. My little Aussie plastered to my leg. I’ve mixed the first cocktail of the night, one of my Love’s favorites (a French 75). With a nod to my friend Bill’s annual Beef Wellington we will dine on Salmon Wellington. Beth and I will reflect on our blessings. The joys we have each and every day. It’s different today, Christmas Day. It just is. Still, it needn’t be. What we cherish about Christmas could be an every day thing and Christmas would still be special. Really. It would. But each and every other day would be so much more–don’t you think?–if it was a bit more like Christmas.

I’d love to take credit for that idea, but it’s not mine. Each year I remind myself, and anyone who joins me here, that making “that Christmas thing last” is within our grasp. We have Paul O’Neil, the genius behind the Tans-Siberian Orchestra, to thank for that. And so I will leave you with his words from my very, very favorite Christmas song, “An Olde City Bar” from the epic Christmas rock opera “Christmas Eve, and Other Stories” in the hope that you, too, will see the Christmas in each and every day.

And seize the chance…

“If you want to arrange it
This world, you can change it
If we could somehow
Make this Christmas thing last
By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
To know who needs help,
You need only just ask.”

Merry Christmas my friends.

I’ll see you Sunday…

1 Gallimaufry. A confused jumble or medley of things.

Sounds like “Sunday musings…”

2 Soul. The latest from Pixar. Top of my “to watch” list.

3 Fischer. We watched “Finding Bobby Fischer” last night. If you have children and are in the active phase of the parenting gig this one is highly recommended. Especially if they show any inclination to excel in any particular activity.

Put it on top of your “to watch” list.

4 Half. As in half bottles of wine. My friend and wine merchant Sue sourced some half bottles of Vintage Port. All of them are now mature enough to drink, in part because they are all 20+ years old and also because the smaller bottles lead to earlier maturity in the wines they contain.

This is a great way to enjoy special wines you might otherwise not be able to access. Put half bottles on top of your “to try” list.

5 Nutrition. Roughly 3 months ago “Lovely Daughter” and her “Prince Charming” suggested that Beth and I watch a documentary “Forks Over Knives.” In short the documentary reviews the work of a Cleveland Clinic doctor and a Cornel University professor. I’ll save you the time if you wish. Their essential finding is that eating a strict Vegan diet leads to less heart disease and more importantly a reduction in deaths from all kinds of cancer.

Megan and Ryan have been eating a pescatarian diet for a bit over a year by now. Think of it as the Mediterranean Diet on steroids. If you’ve followed any of my gallimaufry over the years you have watched me carom from one type of nutrition strategy to another. The Zone led to a macro diet followed by a near-keto strategy, all meant to reduce my genetic predisposition to classic heart disease associated with elevated serum lipids. In one of the medical upset losses for the ages I am in the 10% or so of folks who have an INCREASE in LDL, etc. eating a high protein/high fat/low carb diet. On top of all of that there was no cancer-avoidance inherent in any of those strategies.

Now that it is clear that I can no longer maintain a lipid profile that reduces my cardiac risk without medication (which thus far has been wildly successful, by the way) my dietary options open up a bit. Why not emphasize, or at least put a bit of prioritization on following research that supports the anti-cancer properties of avoiding meat. We’re not on board enough to abandon all forms of once-living protein sources; like Megan and Ryan we are eating fish of all kinds. This has made it surprisingly easy for us. Hunting down plant-based protein sources on the daily would quickly drive us both back to McDonald’s.

Any effects after 3 months? Well, it’s not any easier to maintain my fitness or percentage body weight fat with this plan without returning to high intensity exercise than it’s been on any other nutrition plan. Duh. But I have noticed the first real breakthrough in my sleep quality since making the change. What was once a 2 or 3 time trip to the loo each night is now one, at most. And my HRV is running in the 90’s vs. the 40’s before (high is good). The only change on which to hang my hat is diet.

I’m due for some lab work this week so we’ll see if it’s doing anything on that front. I’m kinda hoping that it’s a wash to tell you the truth. There’s no percentage in messing with my modern medical interventions (my cardiologist would kill me). As long as I’m not an outlier with the Mediterranean Diet, too. That would be super frustrating.

Now I just have to find stuff to pair with a big ol’ bottle of Cab.

I’ll see you next week…

Shooting the Breeze: Sunday musings…12/6/2020

1 Vaccine. Just tell me where and when and I’ll be there. 

You should be, too.

2 Letters. I just started what looks to be one of those simply wonderful books that you can’t wait to open and will simply hate to see close. It’s called “Dad’s Maybe Book” by Tim O’Brien. Pretty simple concept. O’Brien, a famous writer who became an older Dad, wrote letters to his two sons beginning when the older boy, Timmy, was around 4. Tim Sr. is a very gifted writer and this one looks like it’s going to resonate; I’ve read 6 pages and shed tears twice. 

It’s perfect timing, as it so often turns out to be with books like this. O’Brien talks about the inevitability of time, the sure to come years, too many years, when his boys will be forced to make their way without the aid of his love and wisdom. My Dad’s life, more specifically how he lived his life, was a constant in teaching my brother and me how to live. Not a man of letters (though the 3 he did send live close in a drawer in my nightstand) I must admit that my memories get hazier with each passing year. 

Once written a letter can go on telling someone how much you love them long after they’ve started to struggle to remember what it sounded like when you first told them. 

3 Shoot. One of my buddies made good this morning on his threat to take me shooting. At 0900 with temps in the 30’s under typically gray Cleveland skies, Jeff and I set up shop at his working man’s range for some trap shooting and camaraderie. Everything about this morning was very generous. Jeff brought the shotguns, provided the ammunition, and paid the range fees. Wouldn’t let me pick up a thing. Prior to today I’d only shot a gun once before in my life; taking me to the range was the equivalent of a scratch golfer inviting someone who’d never even played puttputt to join them for a full round of golf. 

I’m sore as hell, but I had a ball. 

Over the course of the last couple of years I’ve come to see just how much of my time is still given over to my job and the activities that branch out from it (I’m supposed to be with my work “tribe” in Miami this weekend). When I had my hip replaced in April of 2019, I learned that if I don’t go to work I can’t account for roughly 40% of the waking hours in my day. And that’s with getting at least 8 hours of sleep each night instead of the 6 I usually get. Unlike our crazy 2020, that 4 ½ week period during which I recovered from surgery was a true test of what retirement might look like because I could do pretty much anything I wanted to do with or without Beth. She had 3 hours of barn time each morning; I found myself just killing time. 

This year, both the lockdown, shelter-at-home months earlier in the year, and the huddle at home when not working ones we are living now, what I’ve learned is that I’ve allowed myself to have a rather 2-dimensional life: work and home. To be sure both are really quite fine, at least for the moment. It remains to be seen what the most recent upheaval wrought by yet another government intrusion will bring in the office. What I now know, though, is that since walking away from public CrossFit I no longer have a “3^rd space” in my life. I no longer have a 3^rd “thing”, like Jeff has shooting, that brings me away from work and out of the home to commune with like-minded friends. 

Due to its very nature, the intensity that makes it so different from other fitness program, it was likely that I was destined to drift away from the doing of CrossFit sooner or later. But after spending 4 or 5 years exercising alone and pretending that the internet-based cyber gym was a real place, I learned that the true magic of CrossFit happened in the CrossFit Box. Our family gym owned by our boys and run by the family collective, gave me not only a true third space but also anon-family, non-work “tribe” I knew I’d see 3 or more times each week. When it was good, when the repeated close proximity and shared suffering resulted in forged bonds, it was as close as I ever came to having something like what Beth has at her barn or my brother has at his golf club. 

As much as I enjoyed CrossFit (and skiing, and golf) what was best was the shared experiences and shared interest that brought me together with other CrossFitters. My right shoulder is a mess; I will never be the golfer I once was. After surgery my legs are literally so different in length that I need bespoke ski boots; I can’t even give it a go without first finding a specialty shop that can MacGyver me a pair. Neither golf nor skiing move me like dressage moves Beth, but with these two activities I do at least know where to find my 3^rd group. Is it better to revisit turf once trodden, or to strike out on trails untouched with something new like shooting? Do you necessarily have to discover (or re-discover) a passion when all you really need is a place and your people?

Like my post-op recovery, the Pandemic will subside and we will be once again free to seek out our 3^rd space. I still don’t know where mine is or what I’ll be doing there, but my Jeff’s generosity this morning shows me as clearly as anything else that whatever I do or wherever I do it, I need to be with a 3^rd group of folks who mean more than whatever it is we end up doing together. I had fun learning how to shoot a shotgun this morning, but what was really fun was having my buddy Jeff do the teaching.

I’ve taken aim. It’s well past time to pull the trigger.

I’ll see you next week…

Sunday musings…11/29/2020

“This is my family. It’s little and broken, but still good. Yah, still good.” –Stitch

My professional buddy Mark sent a WhatsApp chat to our little group this morning, a picture of his family reunited after many, many weeks apart. It began with “After social distancing on steroids”, very much a universal sentiment in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, don’t you think? It certainly was for us. 

We had it going both ways in our little family. One child distanced out of town, imposing guidelines on everyone so that they could make it home. They were rewarded with a plane containing only two other passengers and a nearly empty airport on both ends of the trip. Sadly, our gathering with another child was delayed because of the contact of a contact. Despite everyone in the household playing by the rules a chance encounter at work by a contact’s contact forced everyone to wait on a test result (which blessedly came back negative). My Mom self-quarantined for 10 days so that she could enter my brother’s bubble. 

There’s nothing special about any of these stories, just that they are mine. Both of you reading my stuff did the same, and your people did, too. The “why” is really quite simple: Thanksgiving is about family. Not the turkey and the fixin’s. Not the annual Thanksgiving Day high school football grudge match played every year since 1920. Just family, and if you’re lucky, being with your family or what stands in for family (like Stitch). There are no gifts involved, no commerce or commercialism. The gift you give is in the effort you make to be present with and for family.

Thanksgiving is when you choose to be together. Hardships are understood and forgiven. Warmth is the abiding feeling, at least after you come home from that football game. The only thing burning is the fire in the hearth, and perhaps the garage where your uncle was frying a turkey. Burning issues are set aside for another time. Heat in the room comes from the blanket that’s been on your grandmother’s couch since you were a toddler. 

At least once on Thanksgiving you find yourself in a quiet place and you just sit and watch. And listen. You close your eyes for a moment and you feel 10, 20, maybe 50 years younger. Everyone is there. Everyone from forever. There’s your Gramp finishing the crossword puzzle. Mom is finishing the dishes while your Gram puts away the stuffing. Grampa is putting an old album on the record player. Grammy is passing out pieces of pie. A crowd is gathered around the pot where your brother is making turkey soup, the annual battle over how much to put into the soup vs. leave out for sandwiches is in its full glory. Cards are snapping off the deck, each new log explodes as it hits the fire, Dad is snoring. It’s every year, right there in this year. You open your eyes and just for a moment you can still see them all. 

Thanksgiving is that one time each year where you gather family together, in person or in spirit, and celebrate that you have each other. All families are little in more ways than not, even if they have many members. Likewise, all families are a little bit broken in some way at some times. But for the most part Stitch is right, all families are still good. Thanksgiving is when we remember that. When we give thanks for that.  Being together is wonderful if it’s possible, but this year teaches us that Thanksgiving is not at a football game or on a table. 

This year and every year Thanksgiving lives in our hearts. 

I’ll see you next week…

Time, Timing, and the Times: Sunday musings…11/22/2020

1. Flights. I misread a sentence that began with “flights of fancy” as “flights of decency”. Kinda like that old bumper sticker about “random acts of kindness”. 

Should be a thing, flights of decency.

2. Letters. Beth has an “uncle” who is an artist (as an aside, it’s still hilarious to remember when our kids discovered that Jay wasn’t really related to them). Over the years he has gifted me many times with stationary bearing his work. In truth these cards are so beautiful that I really haven’t had the heart to send them to anyone. It’s sorta like having a case of wine you really love and you just can’t bear the thought of running out.

Still, in these fraught times, despite having bad handwriting even for a doctor who once actually wrote in medical charts, I believe it is time to use Jay’s gifts for what they are intended. Perhaps I will take the opportunity to re-learn cursive, a skill that I might then be allowed to pass on to my Littles as a kind of social gift. 

And maybe, just maybe, Jay will pass on to me the rights to at least one of his drawings so that I can continue to enjoy his gift once the gift of having him here is no longer. 

3. Teleoanticipation. The science of finish lines. Another in the long line of Twitter finds for me. As creatures we seem to be wired to aim for the finish line. Not only is this goal-directed stance productive, but we also gain a sense of structure that leads to a reduction in stress and anxiety no matter how weighty a particular finish line may be. Just the fact that we know something will end, something other than a life that is, brings us a kind of peace. 

If we endure, if we can just carry on, we will make it to the finish line. 

This, as it turns out, is one of the great challenges we all face now as we soldier on through the Pandemic (seems like that should be capitalized). We have no finish line in sight. Not only that, but in something which nearly every public leader has compared to what societies have only faced before in cases of warfare or other devastating plagues, we’ve not received the kind of leadership that prompts one to forge ahead without any finish line in sight. Please note that this statement is not directed at any particular leader or leadership group in any particular city, state, or country. Churchill’s figurative progeny has yet to show their face anywhere on the planet. 

Without inspirational leadership we are left with a challenge without an end in sight. The challenge of living with the Pandemic, both for ourselves and others, is made all the more difficult because we don’t know how to pace ourselves. On Monday I was quite sure that I could see the end after a second company announced the success of their vaccine trial. Today’s newspapers are awash in analyses that explain why the vaccines will have little impact on the race just ahead. The finish line still lies somewhere ahead, out of view, with no guidance as to how far away it might be. 

I have played the game of delayed gratification before. Several times, in fact. Every doctor does so; we give over years of our younger lives to our training in favor of many more years of practicing medicine. Every parent does so as well; the joys (and travails) of raising our children come before most of our personal desires in most cases. But in both of these examples you can see the finish line, at least the finite finish lines of graduations and the new races that begin with them. 

It’s clear to me that a significant part of the anxiety we all feel now is the uncertainty we feel about not being able to see a finish line.

By any account I am in the last 3 innings of my own game of life. There’s just less time left, you know? I’m not saying that I have any strong fear of being sick, getting lifted in the 6^th inning, and sent to the last locker room; like everyone I know and love I’m doing my best to stay healthy in all ways. No, what I’m feeling is this sense of running out of time. And not just time in general but the very specific time of being with the people I love. Family and friends here and afar. I see this in tiny decisions I barely know I’m making. I have always loved to read. My brother used to get so mad at my folks when I would get a book for Christmas or my birthday. “Now I won’t get to play with him until he finishes that stupid book.” Just this morning as I cut out the book reviews of my next reads I realized that I’m not really having next reads but rather choosing to do stuff I’d always read through because that other stuff means I am fully “playing with” those around me. 

Listen, I know that it is more than somewhat disingenuous to think of “stay at home” orders as in some way analogous to gathering in shelters during the Battle of Britain. I know that. Still, like those courageous souls who dutifully descended into the darkness to escape the hell raining down from the skies, randomly taking from them their futures, stories abound of the additional challenge those people faced in not knowing when their nightmare would end. Pheidippides did not know how far away he was from Athens when he began his fateful run, but he knew where his finish line was. 

“The last thing we run out of is the future.” Michael J. Fox. 

It is time that this Pandemic is stealing from each of us. The obvious theft of a life lost but also the theft of time that we have always chosen to spend among those we love. Time that we cannot spend in that way. Not knowing how long we will go without those connections, not being able to see the finish line, makes it all the more difficult. There is little comfort here save this: not knowing how long we will be about this is something that is real, something that is hard. It’s OK to feel that.

But as hard as it is, for most of us there is still some future out there. Still some time. Still more miles to be traveled, however near or far our own Athens may be. The most important step is not the next one, it’s the one we are taking right now. We run our race today, with or without seeing the finish line. We own only today. We stand on the mound, the ball still in our hand, ready to make our next pitch. Today.

Our future is the next step. The next pitch. We’ve never really known when we ran out of future, never really seen the finish line. All we’ve ever really had is today. All of our finish lines depend on us staying in the race today. Run today’s race. We can endure. We can carry on. We can reach all of our finish lines.

We can keep on running. 

I’ll see you next week…

Sunday musings…11/8/2020

1 Consilience. Knitting together of sciences and humanities.

Actually a word. 

2 Polymath. No, not many maths. A person who is knowledgeable or accomplished in many fields or across many disciplines. 

Good at consilience.

3 Single. As in single-payer healthcare. Prepare to hear a whole lot about this. Yesterday on Twitter I was taken to task by someone who works in the NHS system in the UK (not sure if they are a doctor as they did not say, nor does their handle give any indication). As we begin 4 years of the Biden presidency with at least 2 years of a Democratic-led House I predict that financing healthcare will be among the first 5 issues tackled. 

For the record I’m OK with addressing healthcare financing. 

What I won’t be OK with is the condescension leveled at me yesterday by the NHS employee. Their position is basically that as a private practice specialist who has worked under a pure fee for service system, I have no standing in the discussion. I am not a voice to be heard, pre-cancelled, nullified. For two reasons this individual could not be more wrong. As a taker of the Hippocratic Oath I am honor bound to advocate for that which is best for my patients. Every doctor has a seat at this table. 

The second reason my voice should be heard is because of the length of my tenure working in our present system. No, simply being an old guy doesn’t get me a seat. Being old enough to have worked in the system during HMO v1.0 in the 90’s does. You see, HMO’s as constituted in the 1990’s were a very good experiment in how a single-payer system a la the NHS or the Canadian system might work in the U.S. Top-down administration. Financial decisions rather than clinical decisions with regard to covering entire segments of disease, entire classes of medications. Patients and physicians quickly came to loathe how these HMO’s functioned; we actually have data to examine that should allow us to see how NOT to do it if it is to be done. On the positive side we could look to the highly successful Kaiser systems in place in Colorado and California, American models in which there appears to be much more satisfaction on both sides of the care relationship. 

This is a conversation that is worth having based on data that is available. It can be had without resorting to ad hominem and broad-stroke nullification. I intend to participate. 

4 Gizmo. “It tastes like a memory.” Beth, after her first sip of our family version of the Gimlet. 

Memory is a funny thing. We don’t really remember details all that well, we humans. Oh sure, some of us are blessed to be able to remember certain things better than others (I remember most of what I have read; Beth remembers most of what she does with her hands), but the details fade for even those so blessed if we look back over a long enough period of time. What we do remember, and what actually is likely to help us remember more details, is how we felt during a memory. Our emotions are like a kind of glue that secures at least some of the objective details of an event. 

As I walk my little dog Sasha I find that we are joined on our tiny journeys by memories of all sorts. As an aside I don’t really know why it is that memories come while we are walking rather than times of quiet repose. In any event, how I felt at the time of any particular event is what comes to me first. Be it happy or sad, triumphant or despondent, each memory is carried to me on a wave of emotion. I have lived–indeed I am living–a lovely little life; most of my memories are quite nice. Sasha and I are most often borne ahead under a rainbow festooned sky. 

The Gizmo is just such a memory. One evening Beth had a yen, but just couldn’t place the name of our drink. “Gimlet” insisted on hovering just outside her conscious memory. “Could you make we one of those Gizmo’s we like so much?” Equal parts hilarious and precious, our house Gimlet had a new name. It became a standing part of Friday night family meals, the first course in countless evenings that I now remember only by how I felt. Warm. Happy. Home. For a long time, I would order a Gimlet in any restaurant I visited, trying to start a meal out with those same feelings of a meal in. No one made a drink quite like a Gizmo; each meal out was fodder for new memories only. 

Last night we lingered over our Gizmo’s, awash not so much in the details of those long-ago dinners but in the emotions. Each sip bringing back to us the laughter and the love as we savored our memories. 

I’ll see you next week…

Sunday musings…11/1/2020

1 Fall. Back. An extra hour to your day in 2020. I slept in.

Why take a chance?

2 Election. Two. More. Days. Then we all learn a new word from the lawyers.

Admit it, last time you thought chad was a fish or the name of a guy in a silly commercial. 

3 Sports. At the moment I am pretending to watch the Browns game. This morning I pretended to care about yesterday’s OSU football game, and I was honestly curious to see if Padraig Harrington had held on in the PGA tournament being held in the Bahamas (he did not). There’s a rumor that high school football and soccer games are happening. One of the local parochial schools came in second in the state golf tourney. 

Sports are happening. Sports are a thing. 

Midway through the initial nationwide lockdowns the New York Times declared that there were no sports being played and therefore there was no need for a separate sports section in the national edition on Sundays. You kinda got the feeling that the editors and writers for the paper were happy to drop sports, or if not fully dropping, to demote them to a level several steps below the wedding announcements. You got a strong sense that the NYT, former home of giants such as Anderson and Berkow, writers whose prose was worthy of any subject whatsoever, was somehow embarrassed that they had a sports section. How else to explain the continued absence of a Sunday Times sports section.

When I was a relatively naïve college athlete who thought everyone liked sports I came into contact with this point of view. During one of my years in school there was a movement among a significant percentage of the college’s faculty to pull back from athletics. It’s been many, many years so what I remember is not so much the details as how it made me feel as a member of the college community. Unwanted, frankly. Mind you, this was many years before we became nationally renowned for our teams’ successes. We were competitive; games were fun. Then we all went to class. Still, a part of our faculty felt that athletic pursuits were somehow lesser pursuits. 

I’ve led a largely intellectual life since leaving college. Funny how I still seem to have the soul of an athlete. 

4 Wednesday. The day after election day is highly unlikely to bring closure to the election. Good, bad, or indifferent, we are unlikely to get the landslide victory that will head off the stampede to the courts for which both campaigns have been girding for many months. Eventually, though, a result will be certified. A president will have been elected. No one knows precisely when that point will have been reached, but it will come. When it does, I’d like to ask that each one of us pledges that we will do two things that Americans have done time and again during ages in which there was both deep alignment and profound disagreement about where our country should head.

I’ll start: Regardless of the results I will accept the outcome of the election. Regardless of the results I will acknowledge that there will be people I know and care about who are deeply saddened by the outcome; whether we agreed or disagreed on the issues I will affirm our friendship and do what I can to comfort them. 

In the end we do not live our lives within the confines of a ballot box. While there are definite effects of elections in our lives, how we live amongst each other, with each other, is so much more impactful. Your vote certainly counts, and I hope that you will have voted. But how you treat your people counts more. Indeed, how you treat people with whom you simply come into random contact counts more. 

Come Wednesday or whenever, I pledge to see you as who you are and who you’ve always been. Still.

We’ll all still be here, so I’ll see you next week…

Sunday musings…

1 Anecdata. Anecdotes (stories) strung together as if they were objective data from a scientific study. Presently driving an inordinate amount of dialog on social media as well as more traditional information sources. 

Should be a word.

2 Disgust. Once again, the only word to describe my emotional response as I sit over my absentee ballot (we have voted this way for almost 10 years; I can’t predict my availability on any day whatsoever, let alone voting day). I felt exactly the same way 4 years ago. This is the best our two major parties can do? These two? Really? This is what I get to choose from? 

Again?

3 Simple. My daily life is rather public. By that I mean that I am directly interacting with multiple people who are not in my friendship circles, and through multiple venues I am placing who I am (professionally) in the public sphere. Part of my interaction each day is answering my patients when they ask me, quite sincerely, how I’m doing. My answer, at least up until a couple of weeks ago, was “OK enough”. 

No longer. 

Why? Well, it’s all about perspective, right? Even my original answer “OK enough” was about perspective. I had no real worries. I was employed and had work, my family and I were all healthy, and in many ways I was driving at least my own local bus routes. Still, I was obviously trying to convey a sense that it wasn’t really OK. Not really. My reality was a kind of different that was somehow less than OK. Objectively I could point to all of the really fun stuff Beth and I had planned to do to mark my 60^th birthday and our 35^th wedding Anniversary. I could reference how my speaking and consulting work had disappeared. 

But my seemingly diminished daily life led itself to the analysis that free time affords. In that respect it became very obvious that my life was not really diminished at all. It was not a small life in any respect. What it had become was simple. I had once again been living a simple life, one not unlike that which we enjoyed—truly enjoyed—when our children were school age. When our kids were K-12 I did pretty much what I do now: go to work, then go home. For some 15 or so years I did the barest minimum of professional travel necessary to maintain my medical license and not one minute or mile more. 

My industry buddies called it “D. White’s sabbatical”. 

There was nothing about my life that was small. Just like now. My life is simple. Straight forward. But it’s hardly small. I am surrounded by people who care about the minutes of my day in the same way they did 15 or 20 years ago. At work I do what I’m supposed to do, take care of each individual patient who sits in front of me. And then I go home. I go to the best place in the world. The place where who I am as cherished for no other reason than that: I am who I am. Simple, but hardly small. 

You could make a case that no life could possibly be larger.

4 Memorial. Today my family marked 5 years without my Dad. Today was the 5^th annual mass held in memory of my Dad, Richard E. White. Dad passed away on October 10, 2015 at 8:30 in the evening. He died peacefully in the company of my Mom, one of my sisters, and a couple who had been among my parents’ closest, most loyal friends. My Dad was terrifically afraid to die. In a beautiful moment of grace, he was the only one in the room who didn’t know it was happening. 

My parents have been very observant Catholics forever. To mark my Dad’s passing Mom offered a mass each October and designated it a “must attend” performance for my siblings and me. “Your father would have wanted this.” Nonsense. My Mom wants this. My Dad would have been delighted if his offspring (and perhaps their offspring, his grandchildren) got together for a meal, maybe after playing a round of golf, perhaps one that included his favorite wine Chateauneuf du Pape. The mass thing is all about Mom. 

Still, I am sad that I am not there. 

Not guilty, mind you. No, the fact that each of us realizes that it’s all about Mom frees me from whatever guilt I may once have felt. We’re all a bit put out about the whole grand performance part of this. We all miss my Dad every single day. There’s no difference today. My brother was very eloquent as he expressed this. Yesterday was terrible because Dad wasn’t here. Last week, last month, last year. We miss Dad every day. Today is no different for us when it comes to missing Dad. We miss him every single day. 

So, no guilt, just sadness, because it would be nice to see my siblings and my Mom. Absent this whole pandemic thing I would have gotten on a plane, been all kinds of put out because of the rigidity of the experience, but on the plane nonetheless. I’m sad that I’m not. I’m sad because my Mom would have been happier if I’d been there. Sad because I really like being with my brother and my sisters. But in the end just as sad today as I was yesterday, and as I will be tomorrow, that my Dad is gone. Today is just the latest today that I will not hear his voice, feel his embrace, know that he would be there to do whatever a Dad needs to do for a son whenever he might need to do so.

No guilt because I’ve said again and again “I love you” to my, people including my Mom. I’ve done what my friend Bill has long counseled, saying what needs to be said long before there’s no one there to say it to. When my Dad’s day came, I had no peace to make; my Dad knew I loved him. But still, though I’ll have no peace to make or saying left unsaid, sad because today forces me to think about a day when I will miss both a Dad AND a Mom. 

It’s simple, really. Life is smaller when your Mom and Dad aren’t there to live it with you.

I’ll see you next week…