Two kinds of people

When my son was applying to colleges, one school asked a great question.

"There are two kinds of people in the world. What are they?"

So this would be my answer: those who care and those who don't.

NOT CARING

I'm meeting Susan for an early dinner near Lincoln Center when a car pulls over to the sidewalk, near where I am standing. A woman gets out of the car with a bag of trash in her hand. A plastic bottle noticeably falls to the ground as she is exiting the car. I watch as she walks to a nearby trash can and tosses her stuff. She then walks back to the car, steps over the bottle she'd dropped, and gets into the car. Unbelievable! I can't help myself. "Aren't you going to pick that up?" I ask. And before the woman has a chance to say anything, the male driver leans over and says, "No. She did that on purpose," obviously being sarcastic. I am left speechless.

CARING

I am walking along the beautiful esplanade on the East side. I get in about 30 miles/week, and typically do the same route. 

On one particular morning, I am going back and forth between a small stretch, as rain looks likely and I don't want to be caught in it.

After a few up-and-backs over the same walkway, a young girl stops me.

"Are you all right?" she asks.

I'm not at all sure why she is asking, but I nod in the affirmative, remove my airpods and ask, "Why, do I not look all right?"

"Oh no," she replies. "You look fine, but I saw you walking back and forth a few times and just wanted to make sure you were okay."

I'm guessing that from her perspective, she's seeing grey hair, older woman, mindless pacing, must be dementia.

Yikes. I appreciate the caring, but it makes me wonder (well, actually know) that how I look is not how I think I look. Or feel.

I'm back

I have gotten some really nice emails/texts from people saying they miss my blog. First, thank you.

In the past almost-two years, there have been many times I've wanted to write, but three things have stopped me:

• I don't want to offend anyone I know and care about, and inevitably I seem to.   
• Many of the things I'd really like to write about I can't.
• And I don't want to be judged for writing, which I know I will be. My life is not full, and in many ways not all that meaningful. By often writing trivial stuff, I fear some people will then characterize me as trivial. 

But then I think, writing takes only a few minutes out of the day, so it's not like I'm forfeiting a ton of time doing it. Plus, I really enjoy the process (and love your comments). And writing about un-important things doesn't (I hope) mean they define me.

In brief, here is a summary of my recent past.

I no longer have a full-time job. I became un-employed on February 28 of this year. Now if only I could write about my last job experience! it could be a stand-alone blog (or even book) that I think would be wildly entertaining — as long as you're not living it. In short, in my many years of working, for many different companies and people, I have never experienced anything quite like this. I'm sure there was a reason why, for the first time in my career, I was asked to sign an NDA.

Last September we celebrated my mom's 95th birthday on the Cape. It was a great event, despite my having COVID at the time (second time) and not yet knowing it.

But a lot has changed since then. My mom was hospitalized in May with pneumonia and then went to rehab. She is now much better but needs more help then she did a year ago. In July, she moved into a great assisted-living facility called Atria — it's in Falmouth, where she has lived for the past 40-plus years, and where my sister Jean also lives. A good friend of my mom's recently moved in as well. It's a beautiful place, and my mom is doing well there, already attracting new friends with her engaging personality. Atria's daily schedule reads like a summer-camp for adults.

My son has thankfully abandoned Austin Texas (after almost two-and-a-half years of living there) and now has a great apartment on the Upper West Side (more about that later). He finally, on his own, decided that NYC is a great place for a single guy to live. 

So that is basically it.

For today.