Up the River

People have been asking me how I like retirement. Honestly, it sucks so far. But I think that’s circumstantial, and it might get better. First I had my flutter with mortality. Then two close friends had health crises—a severe pneumonia and a serious heart procedure. The trouble with health crises in the seventh decade is that they take place at an age when people often die. And people do die from pneumonia and heart disease. It seems as if we’re old enough that we shouldn’t care so much about death—but it’s actually terrifying to be continually confronted with the possibility.

The trouble with hypochondria is that your wildest fears are confirmed randomly and just frequently enough to keep your anxiety going. In animal studies, this so-called intermittent reinforcement—rewards at irregular intervals—is powerfully addictive. I’m addicted to hypochondria as a result of the fact that occasionally a condition I’ve worried about actually turns out to be real. I fight this hypochondria, but truthfully I’d like to move into my doctor’s office so that she could monitor me continuously throughout the day. I try to be brave and soldier on against my crazy fears. But sometimes this backfires.   A few weeks ago, I felt a peculiar flutter in the left side of my chest. My chest often flutters—anxiety, panic attacks, a sloppy tricuspid—but this time I happened to be wearing my daughter’s Apple Watch. She had bought it on a whim a year ago and then gave it to me so I could count steps. It didn’t work for counting steps, but I was still hopeful I could find some use for ...

Today I spent a few minutes organizing my underwear drawer—or my drawers drawer, you might say. I wasn’t organizing it to make it neater. I was organizing it to help me remember which day to wash my hair.  You see, I wash my hair every other day, which you’d think would be simple. But since my hair is basically pretty clean, I can’t tell by just looking at it whether it’s a hair-wash day.  I mentioned this to my husband. And amazingly he used to have the same problem—until he came up with a solution. If he’s wearing a dark-colored pair of undershorts, he washes his hair. If he’s wearing a light-colored pair, he doesn’t. And because he gets dressed after he showers, he always know what shade of underwear to put on, which twigs him the next day whether to shampoo or not. I decided to make this solution even more mindless by alternating and restacking my briefs—light, dark, light ... It’s embarrassing how big a breakthrough this is for me. What other wisdom has my husband been hu...

 It says so in the Bible (sort of): “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became [a really old woman], I put away childish things.” And so it has come to pass. When I moved to the Upper West Side four years ago to an apartment just steps from the bike path, I bought a fire-engine-red bike, and I started pedaling like a 10-year-old. Riding my bike was an unexpected late-life pleasure that gave me intimate views of my new neighborhood and beyond. It gave me access to places I couldn’t reach by other means, like the little red lighthouse and the great gray bridge of storybook fame: “Once upon a time a little lighthouse was built on a sharp point of the shore by the Hudson River. It was round and fat and red. It was fat and red and jolly. And it was VERY, VERY PROUD. [Then a great gray bridge was built, dwarfing the little red lighthouse and causing a crisis of confidence. But all’s well that ends well.] Beside the towering g...

Like the spiked sphere that has become its symbol, COVID-19 is multidimensional and multipronged. It fucks with your body, and it fucks with your mind. Lately we have come full circle with the mind-fuck part. In the beginning, more than a year ago, there was an eeriness to the virus. No one (and let’s be honest here, not even scientists) knew how you got it—or how you blocked it. Would masks protect you? The answer seemed obvious: Of course. But the CDC said No. But then it said Yes. Could you get it from fomites? Yes. Scour surfaces with bleach and alcohol. Even your food. But then No. Fomites were a trivial source of transmission. Jogger and bike-rider breath? Yes. Then no. Could you get it from your dog? Yes. Is it still yes? Who knows?   The uncertainty bred paranoia. The enemy was invisible—but all around us and strong enough to kill us. Then came a rational phase. Get the vaccine. Get it twice. Safety is 99% guaranteed. No mask required. But now the killer-zombie-movie sequel...

 

My husband and I sometimes have conversations that others might consider morbid, but really they’re a kind of love talk. My husband will tell me that actuarily he knows he’ll die first, since he’s a man and older than I am, so he wants me to know how to do such-and-such. And I’ll protest, saying I know I’ll die first because of my history of cancer and its treatment, so I want to make sure he knows where I put this or that. Needless to say, our daughter freaks out when she hears us talk this way, so we try not to do it in front of her. Truthfully, I’d have been grossed out if my parents talked like this. A couple years ago, that same daughter got a cat. And since she often travels for work or pleasure, she often needs a cat sitter, and she often asks me. If I’m free, I pack a suitcase and take the subway from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where I live, to Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, where she lives. I don’t have many friends in Brooklyn, but I make dates with those I do. Mostly I r...