The One Before All Zeros
I am sitting in a parking lot in San Diego. Now let’s start with an important observation, parking lots in San Diego are one helluva lot nicer than parking lots in most parts of the country. This is not the first time that I have noticed this, but now I am a resident of San Diego, so I look at it through renewed eyes. I have been a permanent resident since January 1, which means I am a California resident for tax purposes. Something tells me that New York State will not lie down and give up on me so very easily since I have paid them a lot of income taxes over the years, but the 2019 returns I recently filed will be the last time I declare myself a New York State resident and now I am a California resident. I am one of those crazy few who have not moved in “retirement” to a tax-advantaged state. I have moved to a place that I want to be and allowed the tax regime to be what it wants to be. I jokingly tell people that I moved here because I didn’t think I was paying enough taxes. That gets a chuckle and there really isn’t any truth to it, even though I would pay a bit more in taxes just to get these nice parking lots.
But the parking lots are not public works, they are standard fare for developers out here and they are indeed somewhat of a standard of “niceness” since things grow so easily out here in this sunshine and pleasant blend of normal humidity. Stuff just grows well out here and the people have come to expect pleasant landscaping at the places that they frequent with their business. Today I am in an office building parking lot in downtown Escondido. It is a whopping four stories high so it probably even has an elevator. It’s a far cry from Manhattan, but it beats Manhattan for convenience (big and nice parking lot) and otherwise it looks like any other office building on recent vintage in America. In fact, while this may be my personal perspective, it looks like a typical building used by medical or healthcare providers, which is what it, indeed, is. I have come here to bring Kim to a routine colonoscopy. Kim is 62 and I’m not sure when she had her last one of these, but it was probably 5-7 years ago. I had one two years ago. Mine was clean and I just got a call from her physician and her’s is clean. That means that neither of us need to do this again for ten years, I believe. That used to be every 5 years, but it’s gone to 10 if you are clean and I trust that is a medical determination and not a commercial determination…thank you Medicare.
We are basically spending the day dedicated to healthcare issues, which seems more common than not among our peers and siblings. I do not want to imply that we are all on life-support, but after a certain age, it does consume a disproportionate amount of our lives to be sure. Most of our sibling conversations these days start with a review of what is happening with us medically. I remember having breakfast with a friend about thirty years ago as we were approaching that supposed big age threshold of forty (something that seems absurd to me now at this age). He had some sort of ankle or tendon issue and when I commented that we were starting to sound like old people talking about our maladies, he said, “Hey, from forty on that’s all that life’s about.” I passed that off as a joke, but have thought of it often wondering whether or not I agree with the sentiment.
My answer to that question won’t surprise you, it a great big, “It depends” (with no double entendre intended on the adult diaper Depends theme). What it seems to depend on is whether you are blessed with a strong constitution or not. I have never thought of myself as a “strong” person. It would not be in the top twenty or thirty descriptors I would use for myself in one of those self-awareness tests. But there is strong and there is strong. I’m big and while no weight lifter by inclination, my size gives me strength compared to many smaller than me. But where my real strength comes from is more a matter of genetics. I suspected this years ago, but had no real proof. In my thirties I went through a few physical traumas including a few coronary scares (and I do mean scares since there was nothing wrong with my heart) and one very real gall bladder scare that landed me in the hospital and a lengthy recovery since arthroscopy was only just in its infancy and my surgeon explained to me that he had to get both hands inside of me and I was lucky that he had such small hands. That equated to a mere nine-inch scar diagonally across my belly. But then I made it through my forties and fifties while carrying way too much weight, but every visit to Pritikin (twice) and Duke confirmed that I was healthy but just bad at processing calories. What I learned from programs filled with people less lucky than me was that having a simple weight problem was much better than other weaknesses like a problem metabolizing cholesterol such that it built up unduly in your arteries. As I watched my mother get to 100-years-old I came to realize that the real strength with which I was endowed was the Eastern European genetics of my mother, which was hearty and strong.
So, I can honestly say that the past thirty years have NOT been mostly about focusing each day on how I feel. I’ve been strong. Unfortunately, that friend who breakfasted with me all those years ago cannot say the same thing, He has spent most of that time battling various maladies that all seem to center around his brain chemistry. He is bi-polar and, I suspect, much more. For various reasons that can mostly be traced to his mood swings, we are not such close friends anymore. I find it confusing and somewhat dispiriting to think that when I call him I cannot simply say, “How are you?” without opening up a Pandora’s Box of woes. If I were guessing I would say that he has probably spent more than ten of the last thirty years bedridden and unable to determine what his problems are caused by. Back in college, he would have been voted most likely to succeed and almost anyone would have assumed that as we approached our seventh decade it would have been me hobbling around (or not at all).
Life is funny that way. What was it that Sally Fields says in Forrest Gump? “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.” Or that song we were all sung by our mothers…”Que sera, sera, whatever will be will be…”. I feel blessed that I am finishing my sixty-sixth year and the worst I have to complain about is a mildly sore back that requires Advil in clinical (800mg) doses, a diuretic for the preventive control of my blood pressure (which causes me to pee in any and every bush along the road) and a need to favor my knees so I do not traumatize them by doing something stupid like run. I remember when my youngest son was about six, he asked me quite earnestly, “Could you EVER run, Dad?” Luckily I found far more humor in that than offense. But it does remind me that long before the digital world came upon us, the Chinese saw life as a set of binary ones and zeros and the astute observation was that without a one at the start, there was little to discuss. They immediately likened the one before all zeros to health. Without it, the rest is game over.