On My Sleeve
It is said by Shakespeare that Iago, Othello’s less-than-faithful servant, wears his feelings on his sleeve. We all know what a crafty fellow Iago was, so it seems somewhat like a head-fake to think that he would be so obvious. And long before that, the Roman army, which strongly discouraged its legionnaires from marrying (presumably for fear that they would go less than all-out if they had something to lose), allowed these soldiers to wear the name of some “temporary” girlfriend on the sleeve of their tunics, much the same way jousting knights wore lady’s scarves on their arms as romantic symbols of their driving forces. Be it as it may, some people are good poker players and hide their emotions down deep while others can be read like a book.
My children come in two varieties. Two of them from my first wife drill everything and anything down into the depths of their souls. Ask them if they are troubled by anything and they are in the habit of simply shaking their heads and carrying on. It all comes out sooner or later, but not before marinating (intended pun on our last name) and getting tenderer. My third child, a son, started in therapy at the ripe old age of three and continued in that for the following 15+ years due to my second wife’s belief that the unexamined life was not only not with living, but certainly worth whatever I could continue to afford to pay for it. He became almost too well-adjusted. He has no difficulty expressing his feelings and clearly delineating what he thinks about everything. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I think it all served him well and he is a wonderful person for it. So, I cannot lay genetic claim to a clear and certain blood lineage that would imply how I sit on that feelings expression spectrum. If I were guessing based on what little I surmised of my parents on this, I would tend to think of myself as more restrained, but cultural or generational dynamics might be overriding underlying tendencies.
This morning, I was leaving the apartment at the same time as our secondary cleaning lady (don’t ask why we have one old cleaning lady who comes on Wednesday and one young, but height-challenged cleaning lady that comes on Friday) was leaving to walk the dog. She looked up at me from her 4’9” frame and said, “You look sad Mr. Rich, is everything OK?” I realized that I must have looked downtrodden for some reason and was “wearing it on my sleeve”. I told her all was well and tried to put enough bounce in my step to be convincing. We walked out together as I was reminded that she has three kids to support out on Staten Island and she hustles across on the ferry to come and clean our house for a handful of twenties. We walked out past Corrado, our doorman, who told me that the chemo results for his wife were showing some positive directionality, but that she had been there before only to have them reverse course. He was cautiously optimistic.
Yesterday a dear old friend who reads my blog told me unsolicited that he felt I was having too much angst about my retirement move and that it was showing through in my writing. No doubt that it’s a short hop from my sleeve to my blog. But the more important thing is to ask why do I seem melancholy to someone like my cleaning lady who might see me once every month or two? The answer is that I am not melancholy, I am pensive, and no, I am not just pensive about my impending move to San Diego. I told my friend that I wish it was tomorrow and I could start my drive west. But long goodbyes bring with them lots of lingering issues that one might otherwise just breeze past.
My company situation is certainly one of them. We are at a critical juncture but there is a daily flow of both good news and less than good news. The good news is long term good news and the less than good news has to do with the needs of the moment. But I can handle that after 45 years of company leadership. But what always happen in these limbo-like moments is that personal issues of self-interest start to bubble up. When there is not enough to feed everyone, everyone gets very hungry and then very hangry. They do things they might not otherwise do and say things that they may not otherwise say. To put it succinctly, adversity brings out the worst in everyone. And all the bucks seem to stop on my doorstep. That is never much fun.
The other problem that seems to float to the surface is that we are all getting older with all that that brings with it. A 62-year-old who works with me called in “sick” (he was really less sick than immobile) this week. He has a bad hip that got inflamed due to the changing weather. Then the youngster who works for me across the hall has had to call in sick most of this and last week due to a horrible lingering pulmonary issue which simply must be more than a cold or even asthma (he’s been afflicted now for five months). Very tough to be young and unhealthy. AN elderly lawyer in our midst walks in stooped manner every day past my office. He looks to have a bit of osteoporosis. I figured him for late 70’s, but this week he brought his wife in to show her around. She was twenty years his junior and looked thirty-something. That was confusing and upsetting for some reason all at once. A long-time friend and colleague asked if I wanted to see his softball-sized hernia which he had to delay repair of since he just had a tooth extraction and adjacent root canal. Triple ouch. And, of course, my right foot (no, I am not Daniel Day Lewis) after minimizing the swelling brought on by avoiding my diuretic for two weeks during my Turkey Ride, has suddenly decided to hurt again, making me think I have a touch of arthritis in it. Damn, not so bad in context, but still uncomfortable.
None of that explains my disheartened look. Then I finally got it. My daughter sent a photo of her youngest looking grumpy and referenced that she was taking on the Gramps look. That would be me, Gramps. As I studied the three-year-old’s downturned lips and sad eyes, I realized that that is simply how I look. I used to wonder why my mother always had the look of someone with a bad smell in her nose even though she was always an upbeat person. It was just how her face went. And there we have it. I got great longevity genes from my mother, but I paid the price in a face that always looks like it’s a bit off. I call it my Eastern European look where hard times are a given.
A friend’s recently arrived Russian bride once said to me that in America if you were not smiling everyone wanted to know what’s wrong. In Russia, she said, if you are smiling they want to know what’s going on. It’s just that “life’s a bitch and then you die” look that we Eastern Europeans have. Luckily it may be on our sleeve, but it is not necessarily what is in our hearts.