Time Marches On–Relentlessly

 

I was always the youngest guy in the room.

When I walked into board meetings at Delray Medical Center or the Chamber of Commerce  I was often the youngest person—sometimes by a decade or more.
When I served on the city commission, I was the youngest elected official on the dais.

My first year, I served with a gentleman named Bill Schwartz. He was born in 1924 and passed last year one week after his 100th birthday. I was born in 1964. Bill was middle aged by that time.

We were friends and got along great, but I remember a goal setting session with the commission in 2000 when the facilitator made it a point to note that Bill and I came from different worlds.

World War II broke out when Bill was a freshman in high school. When I was a freshman the biggest thing I remember was the opening of Rocky II.

We stood in line at the Loews Triplex in Stony Brook. Three screens were a big deal back then.  A triplex felt like a modern marvel.

Still, despite the age gap, Bill and I became friends. We came from different ends of the political spectrum, but when it came to Delray we were united in our views and affection for our town. Those were different days. Local government was devoid of party politics as it should be.

I miss having Bill around. He told some great stories of his service in World War II and I remember going to lunch with him one day at a chain restaurant in Boynton Beach. I noticed that he kept looking at the photographs decorating the walls of the restaurant. He was staring at the stock photographs that are the same whether you are in a Red Robin in Miami or in Pittsburgh.
There was an old photo of a World War II soldier that captivated him. Turns out, it was him. Someone had taken his photo back in his military days and it magically appeared as a stock photo throughout the chain.

Imagine the coincidence. Bill served in the European theatre during the war and was part of the Normandy Invasion.
It was fascinating to learn about history from a participant.

I used to hang on every word my grandfather told me when we visited him.

Stories of fleeing Russia, coming to America through Ellis Island, working as a tailor on the Lower East Side and how he met my grandmother when she was a little girl on a farm in Russia before finding her again as a recent immigrant in the 1920s. They married. Had a family and enjoyed the American dream.
I loved my grandparents. They were my heroes. But when I was a kid they seemed impossibly old.

My grandfather had thinning hair, owned a stylish fedora and often wore a tie around the house even through he was retired and it was Sunday when we would visit.
But he wasn’t stuffy. He was warm, sensitive, loving and had a great sense of humor. He routinely made my grandmother laugh out loud. I couldn’t understand what they were saying–because while they spoke excellent English– they told jokes in Yiddish, a wonderful, descriptive language.

I loved it when they laughed. Visiting them in their apartment in Queens and later Brooklyn was a highlight of my childhood.
They had Al Jolson albums, plastic covers on the couch and endless Hershey kisses in glass bowls around the apartment.
Still, they seemed to come from another time and place. A time and place I loved, but very different from the world I was living in.

I raise this observation because lately I’ve been feeling all 61 of my years.
Mind you, I feel good. But the world is starting to see me differently.
For the first time when I went to the Norton Museum I was charged a senior admission.  I didn’t ask for one. The 20-something attendant just looked at me and assumed senior citizen.

And recently when my wife and I had lunch at BJ’s Pub in West Palm Beach a bus boy came over and told me I looked  like his grandfather.

He thought I took offense and made sure to tell me that he was 18 and that his grandfather was a cool guy who lived in the Keys and once served in the Coast Guard.
I assured him that I was flattered.

Truth is, I wasn’t, but that’s on me. After all, I can easily be a grandpa.
In real life, I’m not a grandfather yet. I thought I’d be by now. But not yet.
I still have hope though.
Still, mentally it’s an adjustment to go from the young guy in the room to the graybeard. It feels like just a moment ago that I made those “40 under 40 people to watch” lists.
These days I’m just as likely to hear “hey, you still working?” as I am to hear “what’s the latest thing you’ve got cooking.”
Again, I feel young— most of the time. I’m grateful for that. But I’ve noticed something that most people my age would agree with; time seems to go faster as the years go by.

This year is a prime example. It’s almost Thanksgiving…already.

Still, I am determined to get the most out of this phase of life. I listen to a podcast called Middle Age Chrysalis. It’s produced by the Modern Elder Academy founded by a guy named Chip Conley. Chip was a famous hotelier who was hired by the Airbnb guys when they were scaling their company. They were wise enough to understand that it often pays to have someone with gray hair around to help steer you through the inevitable rocks that life throws at us. Chrysalis is an interesting word. It signifies transformation and is often used to describe when caterpillars become a butterfly. We break through the protective casing of youth and transform into adults. We carry scars, experience, wisdom and knowledge. In short we become…and we grow from there if we are lucky.

So while I don’t relish the tough parts of aging, I have to admit there are rewards (and senior discounts apparently). We have to stay engaged. We have to savor the seasons of life. We have to live.
And so I have a new goal: maybe I can be the Grandma Moses of playwrights. Or maybe a grandfather someday.