It's my father's birthday. It would have been his 100th, but he passed away thirty years ago, at 70, just after his birthday, in fact. I spoke with him on the phone the night he died, he was scared. I remember. He didn't want to go, it was too soon. But he was prepared. No, let me change that, he was warned. He had multiple myeloma. A death sentence at the time. They said three years, turned out it was four.
Back then you doctor-shopped for cancer treatment. At least for multiple myeloma. My hematologist now says you can get good treatment everywhere, at least in the metropolis, because multiple myeloma is a hot area, it's where all the breakthroughs are, they just approved a drug from China this week, but too late for my dad.
Then again, you should still get a second opinion. And if you don't live in a major metropolis, you should go to one for a consultation. There are specialists in the city who see these illnesses all day long, whereas in the hinterlands you get generalists, who see your condition much less frequently, and are not up on the latest breakthroughs. My dad ended up going to this physician in Arizona, Dr. Salmon. He said half the chemotherapy was just as good, which turned out to be true. It was hard to tolerate to begin with, just imagine if my father had to take double the dose.
You'll get cancer. Everybody does. At least if you live long enough. That's what Mitch, my internist, says. That all his aged patients have had at least one bout of cancer. You think you're gonna live forever, you're not. And you probably don't realize it. But one day you will. Maybe you'll try to fight it, with plastic surgery, quack treatments, but no one here gets out alive.
And speaking of quack treatments... If you get cancer you'll hear about them, from friends telling you western medicine is screwed-up and if you just ate the right thing, went to their unaccredited shaman, you'd live. You won't.
Why the government gets a bad name here I don't know. And Big Pharma too. Big Pharma is flawed, but you want their medications when you're bitten by a bug. And the government is looking out for your health. At least the FDA, the CDC has been politicized, it used to be run by lifers, now it's run by a political appointee, and politics enters the equation. We want someone like Fauci, who is not beholden to the ballot box, but somehow he's the enemy now too. I mean life must be tough if you can't trust anybody other than nitwits who spew falsehoods that align with your beliefs. We need some trust in our society in order for it to function, big time.
Not that I planned to write all this medical stuff when I started typing. But I'm gonna die, and it's now sooner rather than later. It's weird. Not frightening, but hard to accept. I look in the mirror and I'm old, but inside I'm still young. But I do notice no matter how much I exercise I can't build the muscle mass of yore. But there's so much I want to do. But my generation's time is waning. At this point, the boomers my age are either running the outfit or retiring. It's very strange. Everybody's talking about laying down their sword and living a life of leisure. Seems positively scary to me. What are you gonna do all day? I got enough of streaming TV during lockdown, let me out!
But you reach a certain age and you realize it's just a game, it's all meaningless. But those younger just cannot understand. That's the funny thing about life, you can tell people about it all day long, but in truth they have to experience it for themselves.
But some wisdom is important. If you've got a pile driver parent, that's probably good. When I came home from high school the first quarter with a bad report card my father went positively insane. And that he knew how to do. That was one of his skills, going absolutely crazy.
He'd lose control. The older you got, the more you got scared. You'd be standing there, enduring verbal punishment, but you were more worried this guy was gonna start destroying the environment, wreaking havoc.
But in truth education is everything. You're eager to start, people drop out to do their heart's desire, but as you age you realize that head start was just a drop in the bucket. Four years? In the blink of an eye.
So my father supported my passions, but education was always number one.
And he was a strange guy. Very internalized. My older sister went to social work school and started to unpack the family's issues and at first my mother was open to it, but then she shut down, didn't want to hear it, barked back that yeah, everything was her fault, right...facetiously.
And it's funny, because my mother was the verbal one, the life of the party, the straw that stirred the drink, but her death is liberating in a way the passing of my dad was not.
Well, maybe too much time has gone by and I don't remember. I do remember my dad always being there for me when I was truly low, whereas my mother'd kick me. And then she'd be pissed that I wouldn't share my feelings. So you can put me down?
It was hard to even have a conversation with my father. You could listen to him, giving you the Morris Lefsetz Philosophy, but as far as telling your story and interacting, never really could happen. But he had a bit of a sixth sense. He was the one who took me back to the big box store to return that record. Hell, when you're young and you mix in some OCD a defective record could mean a lot to you, throw you off course. My mother wouldn't quite laugh, she'd just say it wasn't a big deal. So I stopped sharing. And then she was mad I did.
My father was a self-made man. He came from nothing. And was very proud he established what he did. He never ever invested in the stock market, he didn't trust it. Real estate was his game. Not that he had enough money to play it at a high level, but...
Those were different times. Everybody was middle class. No one was rich, not like they are today. Sure, there were people poorer and wealthier but you could reach out and touch them, you could enter their sphere, end up in their world, whereas today it's an impossibility.
And when you're a strange guy people say strange things about you. My dad died, but it didn't take long, until just after the funeral, that some people started talking shit about him, as if they were better. My father knew how they felt. He'd always say we don't live in a big house, we don't drive fancy cars, but we travel and eat out, we have a good life. And we did.
Yes we did. And my father cared about his kids before he cared about himself. During the tennis boom he bought a racket at the gas station, from a passing sot. He didn't need a good one, the rest of us did.
Now today it's trendy to poor-mouth. To say you had nothing and still have nothing and isn't it nice that others have it so good. Forget that so many are lying. Someone just told me he grew up blue collar, lower middle class, but then he let slip his dad was a lawyer. Impossible back in the fifties and sixties. First and foremost there were so many fewer attorneys. But my dad laughed at these people, caught up in their petty games, he was living in his own bubble, his own universe, and created his own rules. My father never adjusted for anybody, being himself earned him his coin.
But we lived in the suburbs, the dreams were different.
So many from my generation grew up in similar circumstances. They did okay financially, but their aspirations were not that high. Writing this right now I realize my aspirations came from my dad, not my mother, the culture vulture. My mother always told me I couldn't do it, but my dad would smile, maybe give me some cash to proceed and then it was up to me.
Not that he could understand me. But the weirdest thing is so many years later I realize I'm just like him. Which is just plain strange, because if you asked me back then I'd say no way. I too don't suffer fools. I too don't weigh in until the conversation is so far off the rails that untruths are being accepted as fact. Because if you interrupt with the truth, people don't like it. There are people who know the truth, with ambition, but you've got to make the contact, you've got to figure out a way to enter their circle, be accepted in the virtual club. That's something most people don't understand whatsoever. If you're dealing with someone further up the food chain your only hope of being accepted is acting like you belong, that you're worthy. Kiss ass and they'll keep you at arm's length. Meet so and so, tell the story, a brush with greatness. But hang with them and go to dinner? Priceless!
I really didn't understand all this until I went to Middlebury College. This was not the suburbs, these people's fathers were running the country, and suddenly I had access. That's probably the biggest lesson I learned there, how to deal with the rich and famous, much more important than anything I learned in class.
And my father set me up. He paid the freight. He was proud. Much prouder than I was, in fact. Same deal when I became a lawyer. But then he expected me to stand up and fly straight, when I'm categorically incapable of doing so.
That's another thing I never realized, my upbringing prevented me from playing the game. Which is all about calibrating your personality and lying so you can make friends and get ahead in business. My father was unfiltered, I had to figure out a way to be so myself and make it work financially.
But then he cut me off. My mother made him. My mother believed in an honest day's work, punching the clock. God, she tore me down so much that I thought I should be one of those people standing on the street corner, twirling a sign. It was the opposite of today's generation, parents telling their kids how great they are. Even worse, my parents would tell us how great other kids were. My sisters are still scarred by this. Then again, this yields determination, to prove them wrong. Well, at least in me.
My father knew the grandkids, but not the great-grandkids, who my mother knew before she passed. My father is in the rearview mirror, a part of history. And soon I will be too.
I do the math in my head all the time. How growing up in the sixties if someone was born in the twenties, they were really old. And the Beatles were born in the early forties, very different from the early fifties. And now if you were born in the eighties you're in your thirties. How did that happen?
And I see people still acting like they did as children. In their behavior. Where do I fit in?
I guess I don't.
Well, in truth my shrink taught me how. And for years I did that, and there are a ton of rewards in being a member of the group, but now even that group are out of the business, most of them. Music is a young person's game. You think it's forever, but in reality it's for very few.
70 seemed old back in 1992, now it seems young. But it's not only me who's going to pass, but everything I believed in. The culture. Most of it was of a moment. Maybe better than what we've got today, but those were different times, you have no idea how much the internet has changed the world. At first it was exciting, now we can see the flaws. The mis and disinformation. The ability to become an influencer, famous from your own home. And you're connected everywhere, and you wish in many ways you weren't. You don't want to hear about the old people, what they're doing. And you don't want all of their information online, to look up. Because when you do you see where you are. On your way over the hill, when you thought you were different. It's kind of like "Godfather III," just when you think you're out of it, you get pulled back in, your whole history boomerangs back on you.
And I remember the dates. My parents' birthdays. Those of college friends. Exes. Some of these people aren't here anymore, and that's strange. You think about stuff you did that you're embarrassed by and then you realize it doesn't make any difference, you can write about it, you're liberated, because they're dead! And soon you will be too.
And it's not that I want my father back around, he'd still be the same guy. He still wouldn't fully understand my hopes and desires. It's just that now I'm part of the continuum. He had his time, I had mine, and soon it'll be someone else's. We all think we're living in the future, but one day we wake up and it's the past.
They told us it would be this way, but we didn't believe them. But it happened to us too. We're now the elder statesmen. We didn't trust anybody over thirty, should today's generation trust us?
We've got a lot to say, but they're not listening.
But you get old enough and you realize the totems of success are nice, but not necessary, even worse, no one is toting up the numbers, there isn't a tally at the end, no one ends up on top. Ultimately you're on your own trip, you've got to satisfy yourself. I read a great thing in a book a couple of weeks back. The protagonist was debating whether to take a risk. And he spoke with someone older and wiser and they said that's how you move ahead in life, by making decisions. You make one, and even if it's wrong, it will take you to a different place, with a new viewpoint and new opportunities. It's so hard for me to make a decision. Has this held me back? I want to do it all, will time run out of the hourglass first?
My father made decisions easily. I am the beneficiary.
I am his son.
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