I am in a cab. Passenger cabin air quality not optimal. Speed and altitude acceptable. (Flying through a red light was certainly invigorating if petrifying.)
transportation
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Category Archives: Life
A Family Pilgrimage
So, we needed to go to Uncle B’s unveiling one recent Sunday. The previous Thursday, I received a call from cousin B. who wanted a ride because he and his wife want to see Uncle B. I wasn’t sure whether he remembered that Uncle B wasn’t going to be there.
So, on Sunday during the first hour of the trip, my sister and I tried to ascertain whether cousin B was going to freak out that no one told him Uncle B was dead, whether he actually knew but was using shorthand or whether he would start forgetting why he was there. Imagine, my sister’s and my asking questions in that way that people in the Saturday Night Live “Pat” skits tried to ascertain Pat’s gender. (He remembered.) But I digress.
My sister and I spent the day before bracing ourselves for my dad and Cousin B in the same car. Why, you ask? Because Cousin B talks about the intricacies of his bodily functions in such exquisite detail that it is a little disturbing and my father spontaneously breaks into “When Johnny comes marching home again”. No joke. No idea why.
My sister and I devised a counting system: my sister would get a point every time cousin B referred to prune juice as an elixir which he discovered, or how he is sledding downhill on a fast sled on an iced-over mountain. I would get a point every time Dad spontaneously broke into When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again, or The Chicken in the Army. What we need to include next time is cousin B’s constant complaining — I ruined his good knee because there was not enough leg room — and Dad’s need to read every sign on the highway and, for fun, putting the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble. Total travel time, 3.5 hours each way plus a few hours at Uncle B’s son’s house for the obligatory food orgy.
Perspective
So, I decided to run to the office today because there are no clients expected in the office and I had already spoken to a few clients early in the morning (G-d bless blackberries and cell phones notwithstanding my prior entries) and I knew no one would get back to me until later in the afternoon. I ran by the Hudson River, listening to music that makes you want to fling yourself out of a window and feeling sorry for myself. I saw all of these people sunbathing and reading the paper and I thought, “don’t you know our whole financial system is teetering on the edge?” They did not look like they were laid off because they didn’t have that I-am-on-an-IV-drip-of-Ativan look. They were calm. I ramped up the fling-yourself-out-the-window (FYOTW) music with Carly Simon’s songs about losing her mother and Tracy Chapman’s songs about doing everything for unworthy lovers. Then, I past the Sanitation Department site and thought wow this is worse than working as a barista in Starbucks when Starbucks was new and clean. Then I kept running (ok limping) until I turned off the path in the 40s. I saw the most peaceful demonstration across the street from the People Republic of China’s consulate. The demonstration alleged torture and cruelty to members of Falun Gong. Homeless people were entranced by the serenity and silence of the protesters. So was I. Then I past construction workers who didn’t notice me because they are more polite these days (and NOT because I am 45). At a red light, I was privy to an intimate and heart-wrenching tid-bit about a seemingly not-quite-right older woman trying to hold onto her room in an apartment and her mother and sister being very distressed about the situation. Then the light turned green and the smell of Port Authority accosted me. Is this how bus travelers first experience New York? Calling Mayor Bloomberg!!!!!!
Life as a daughter
Act I:
Ok ok ok ok ok. Dad’s in the ER. My sister-the-doctor is in Holland. I am now Dr. E in a cab going from one side of town to another in rush hour. The recession has made this less harrowing. The upside of the downturn. I spoke to him on his cell and he seems able to talk notwithstanding a thickness sensation in his throat. Sounds like anxiety that his doctor daughter is away and the lawyer daughter is the only progeny available for a consult. Nevertheless, time to get comfy because it’ll be a long night in the ER for an 89 year-old having an anxiety attack and his daughter who is not THE doctor.
Act II:
My dad is not a sympathetic patient. He is impatient. He wants the VIP treatment because my sister is a doctor. The daughter-who-is-the-doctor is half a world away but he is invoking her aura. He is uncomfortable but can certainly breathe without effort. The discomfort is episodic at most. I don’t wish to be uncharitable about this but if he goes to an ER (as opposed to make an emergency appointment with his any one of his various doctors during the day), he has to wait. The good news is that he isn’t sick enough to go to the top of the list.
There are kids with masks (swine flu no doubt), crazy people and really sick and hurt people. Dad looks like he is just in from Florida and got separated from the tour bus.
I have to use the facilities but I am too scared of the gross public bathrooms here.
Act III:
Ok, so the doctors discharged Dad. We have dinner at a gross neighborhood diner. Ok not dinner, “eats”. I’ll let this pass (like kidney stone).
I suggested (in that way I have of being less than politic) that he see Jeff, his internist (a lovely man who is my sister’s colleague and has known Dad for over 20 years) tomorrow. He mentioned that he thought of that earlier but decided to go to the ER. I then suggested (in THAT way) that maybe (in the future, G-d forbid) he should think to call the doctor and have him meet him in the ER. I say this because Dad had time to go to the periodontist in between gasping episodes. Ok ok ok ok ok. So I suggested that tomorrow Dad call and get a walk-in appointment with Jeff tomorrow and Jeff will walk him over to a specialist (there all share offices in those hospital doctor’s office suites). Also he stopped taking some blood pressure pills (rightfully so, because they were making him dizzy) but he didn’t tell THAT doctor that he had stopped. Ok.
So I took him home and we had a lovely chat about Obama and the gross things in his (Dad’s, not Obama’s) fridge. His former colleague called to see how he was and suggested that Dad call and get an emergency appointment with the internist tomorrow who will walk him over to a specialist. Where did we hear that before???? But DR. COLLEAGUE is more persuasive than DR. DAUGHTER-who-is-a-lawyer. Hey, I may only be a lawyer but Dr. COLLEAGUE knows SQUAT about Dad’s condition.
Dad was feeling fine and so I am on my way home. He didn’t feel like getting into his jammies, so he will call me before he goes to bed. I hope he doesn’t stay up too late because I am exhausted.
Oh and in response to his asking if I was in a meeting when he tried to reach me, I said that I was glad he called me and that I would drop anything if he were in trouble. To which he responded, “well I had to call because you wouldn’t have called me tonight, so how would you know anything had happened?” Shoot me.
Epilogue: the next day
I lost a night’s sleep thinking I left my father alone, but he sounded good last night when he phoned and he sounded great this morning. I woke up in the night choking on my saliva in some sympathetic response to his condition.
Dad went to the doctor and he had xrays and it might be a reflux-related spasm (I had also mentioned that the yesterday, which he dismissed out of hand because I am the wrong daughter to have these ideas). He will have a swallowing test but he is in good spirits.
The downturn and the ramifications
So this blog isn’t just about the humorous and the mundane, it is also about the disappointments.
Most people my age have younger parents. My parents were in their late 30s and early 40s when they had us. They were visionaries because, one generation later, most of my friends and I were that old when we had our own kids. My parents were born in the 1920s to immigrant, semi-literate parents. My parents lived through the depression, the wars and made the galactic leap beyond the Lower East Side and Pelham Parkway (in the Bronx) to settle down in midtown Manhattan where they sent us to private school, camp and schlepped us up to a weekend house. Now, it wasn’t exactly to the manor born because we lived in a tiny apartment (what did my parents know about personal space since they lived two to a bed and five to a room growing up?) and a rambling, ugly country house where there were no other weekenders. But we had all of the advantages and none of the handicaps of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations. My grandfather would shake his head — anything is possible in America.
My whole generation (one my father’s side) had a choice — doctor or lawyer. You could be any type of doctor you wanted or any kind of lawyer you wanted (except medical malpractice). So, choose already because the elders had to talk to the next cousin and make sure that no two cousins picked the same field. Redundancies do not make for a robust web of intra-family professional courtesies. There was a method to this madness.
We were raised to expect to work hard and succeed. Success was the inevitable end of hard work. You could miss Mother’s Day or a family celebration — even great uncle Lou’s retirement party — if you were working. (But you couldn’t miss a funeral or a shiva because even if you didn’t like the person alive, G-d forbid you wouldn’t pay your respects after the end.) But I digress.
Success was measured by your ability to give more to your children and community than your parents did. A Nobel Prize was not required but not off the table either, so to speak.
So, here I am, a formerly successful lawyer. In 2006 and even into 2007, I was feeling entitled and self-satisfied and as if I were paying it forward more than my parents did when, all kind of a sudden, the financial backbone of the world gave way. Like a retaining wall giving way and taking the building and neighboring buildings with it. I am one of the neighbors in the building next door. I had everything given to me and then it was all taken away. The difference is that what I was given was given with love, optimism and a significant amount of expectation and what was taken was taken by systemic hubris and greed.
My parents had the “suck it up” view of life — no matter what, we are responsible for our lives and fear of homelessness is good. Fear is a motivator. Ok, I am fearful but I can’t come up with an exit strategy. Hopelessness is the enemy and must be repelled ast all costs. I try to imagine that I am the protagonist in a Robert Ludlum novel about an anemic looking, gray-haired, 40-something desk jockey — ok, work with me — who fights against the great evil of NO HOPE.
So call me Joan Bourne. Because I want my family to live in comfort and I want this world to be a better place for my having been born into it. But I am still digging out of the mud from the destruction of the retaining wall. Speaking of retaining, my ankles are retaining water and I didn’t give birth to my child. And I can’t sneeze with any sense of security (pause, for the women readers to understand). So, let’s face it — not having given birth didn’t save me from any of this and I didn’t get the larger breasts.
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Notes from Underground
And I thought the Unabomber was in prison. Here is a guy with filthy coke-bottle glasses and crazy hair, carrying many pages of handwritten text. He is now up and asking for money for food and sleep. Money for sleep. Hmmm
It was almost as if he forgot to beg until after he finished writing and scrutinizing other passengers in a sociopathic way. He doesn’t look or smell homeless. He sat back down.
In typical NY fashion, I do not move into another car. I stay in the same car as a sociopath because after assessing the odds of a sociopath in each train car, I am opting for the sociopath I know.
Ok he left. So far, no other sociopath has presented symptoms in public. Many look slightly agitated as if they’ve had bad days and still have to take a commuter train home from Penn Station or Grand Central Station. Others have that blank face that is scary in its own way. Ok, now socio-man has returned, begging.
Ok, so he left again. Now a man in a parka with a hood is talking to himself and staring off in that crazy way. He is really scary because he looks and smells homeless. Not sure why I think he could turn violent at any second. Maybe because he lives way off the grid and he is talking threateningly and with anger. This is a time when I am glad I am getting off at the next stop.
QED that every train car must have a sociopath, lest the cosmic stasis be upended.
Notes from Underground, indeed.
Economizing
So a ride on the bus to save money on a taxi. Too much humanity here, though. A man is wearing driving gloves as he sits in a seat and holds the bar over the seat in front of him. Probably had to give up his car (he looks quite aged) and is yearning for the driving experience. He has Easy Spirit type black shoes and overgrown ear hair. I have been noticing these things a lot more since I have notice whiskers on my chin.
Someone is sitting in a back corner seat and is putting post-its on the wall of the bus. Can’t see too well but it looks like stick figures drawn with a red flair pen.
The man next to me had onions and garlic recently and his reflux is reacting — both directions. I have now moved and have a whole new view (and fresher air). No one particularly remarkable from this angle.
Happy Birthday to me
I am 45. Wow. My inner child however shines brightly through my outward middle age appearance. I ran (almost) five miles on Friday just to prove I still “had it in me” and then I realized that I am the only one who cares about this nonsense birthday ritual and the only thing I prove is that it takes longer and longer for my body to recover. So I learned another thing: the preservation of one’s inner child does not mean that perfectly good analytical brain cells don’t die unused. Had I those dead cells, I might have thought better of my ritual as well as these ramblings. Well no use crying over gray matter. If I don’t have analytical skills at least I have my memory. If I don’t have analytical skills at least I have my memory. If I don’t have analytical skills at least I have my memory. But I digress.
So we had the family over for dinner on Friday. We ordered in and my sister delegated to my aging father the responsibility of getting the cake — chocolate, because I love chocolate. Dad exercised independent judgment — I thought he was more scared of my sister otherwise he would not have — and got a whipped cream fruit tart that he bought with Skymiles. He thought that more people would like it even though I am the birthday girl and I am graying and middle-aged and all I wanted was a little chocolate on my birthday because well, I am gray, middle aged and too stupid to know better than to run (almost) five miles and if my mom is dead and she can’t look at me with adoring eyes and retell the story of my birth, then those of my siblings, then give me a damn piece of chocolate cake. But that’s my problem. Excuse me while I lie on the couch and pretend you all are high-priced shrinks who charge by the “hmmm”. Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. Back to well-adjusted me who doesn’t need to play out her childish (I meant childlike) needs on her birthday.
I promise I will become less depressing as time goes on.
Cool town, spring in the City
It is only 60 degrees and already the sights and smells of summer have hit the subway.
There should be a rule that 50% of one’s body should be covered especially if one’s body mass index (BMI) is over the VPT (visually pleasing threshold). And even after 50% coverage, someone with a BMT over the VPT could trigger an IHR (involuntary heaving reaction). All in all, a public safety crisis that must be addressed immediately by Mayor Bloomberg. Imagine if a subway car full of people had IHRs because of one passenger with a BMI over VPT and less than 50% clothes coverage ratio. Not a pretty sight. In fact, I might have an IHR just thinking about it.
Ok and please explain how people can smell so bad in 60 degree weather. Maybe less bathing is an eco-friendly initiative. I know the smell makes ME green.
Happy anniversary to me
Ok, ok, ok, ok. An inauspicious anniversary. 25 years (give or take) since a construction worker whistled or said something nasty or anatomically impossible to me. The kinder, gentler view is that construction workers, like all others of our species, have become politically correct, at least on the surface. But, I know that the cat calls, the “mamitas” are not for me anymore. Maybe it is the grey. Maybe it is the general sag of those once perky breast that even a miracle bra can’t cover up that does it. Maybe I hated it 25 years ago but I yearn for it now. I am 45. When I was 43, two men in separate instances, said that I looked great for 47. (Clearly one is divorced; the other on thin ice.) So I am not 45 — I am actually 49. Because if I look great for 49, then that is better than people thinking I am older or believing me when I say I am 45. I am not 45. I am 12.