Aging Out

If I told you I had Senile Purpura you might --- if you’re not a medical professional --- express concern, and even begin to worry that I might be “slipping” cognitively. My first encounter with senile purpura occurred about two years ago, when I showed the Lovely Carol Marie a large purple-reddish mark on my forearm. It was her first encounter with senile purpura, too, and her immediate reaction was, “Oh, my god --- that might be cancer!” She insisted I call her dermatologist and get an appointment asap, which I did.

I had met the LCM’s dermatologist before, on one of Carol’s regular visits to Dr. McAleer so I was not a totally unknown quantity. She asked why I was there and when I showed her my forearm, she let out a little laugh and said, “Oh, that’s a purpura --- totally normal for a man your age.” In fact, when I looked it up for this essay, here’s what Google AI told me:

Senile purpura (or Bateman’s purpura) is a benign condition common in older adults, causing dark purple or brown, painless bruises on the hands and forearms due to fragile skin and sun damage. These lesions appear without significant trauma, are not harmful, and usually fade over several weeks, though they are often permanent or recurrent.

As it turned out in my case --- they are, most certainly, “recurrent” --- and nothing to worry about.

They appear periodically now (always on my forearms, left and right) and, beyond their unsightliness, are no bother. What they are, though, is a regular reminder that they are “common in older adults,” which I cannot deny being. And that’s really what this essay is about.

In one of the second season episodes of The Pitt (which I strongly recommend everyone watch!), an older patient (played by Dann Florek, who many will remember as Captain Cragen from Law and Order, and Law and Order: SVU) becomes frustrated by the way the staff --- all significantly younger people --- are treating him. What he says, at that point, has resonated with me from the moment I heard it. “Every old person knows what it’s like to be young --- but no young person knows what it’s like to be old.” It’s a statement I think about almost every day, as I move through a world that is, rightly, dominated by younger people. Two upcoming events in my life have put this whole “age” thing in high relief recently: next week is my 77^th birthday and the weekend of May 29^th is my 55^th College Reunion --- both milestones of some sort, each in its own way.

As one completes another orbit around the sun it is natural, I think, to reflect on where you find yourself this year. And, as one prepares to “re-une” with people he/she has known for almost Sixty Years, it is also a time to reflect, I think, on who you find yourself to be at this point in time. Here’s where those reflections have led me today.

Regarding the birthday --- and I won’t belabor the notion that it’s an anniversary, meaning I’ve completed seventy-seven years on the planet and am entering my 78^th ---- I find that I’ve been reflecting on it through the prism of our grandchildren, and their current ages. It’s kind of a memory exercise, evoking recollections from very specific points in my life and I think, as an exercise, it’s probably just as good as Prevagen --- a product I find baffling (how do you know it’s making your memory better?). In my case, what I’ve been thinking about is how Victor is about to enter 1^st grade in September as Grace is finishing 5^th grade, while Luke is completing his freshman year in high school and Casey finishes his junior year --- all while Cody if wrapping up his second year in college. I don’t know if they will, when they’re 77, remember this year in their personal history as particularly significant but, as it turns out they are all at a point in their time which was, as it turns out, very significant in my own history. So that’s where this tale begins.

Moving chronologically, I don’t think I knew, as I finished kindergarten and was looking ahead to first grade, as Victor is, that I would attend three different schools during the year. In retrospect, I find that notion unsettling but, as I tap into my memory, I seemed to take it all in stride. You really have little to say about your life when you’re six, after all. The reason for the three schools was simple: we sold our house in Babylon and bought one in Bay Shore, moving a little further east on Long Island, into what my parents believed was a more desirable neighborhood and a bigger house (thank you, G.I. Bill). The problem was, when we closed on the house in Babylon (around Thanksgiving, as I recall) the house in Bay Shore wasn’t ready for occupancy --- and wouldn’t be until March of the new year (1956). As a result, we became refugees and, quite literally, moved to my maternal grandmother’s house in Bethpage and lived in a quickly converted (not really “finished”) attic! It was a little crazy but we “managed,” as my Mother always like to put it. I went from attending the South Bay School in Babylon --- a classic modernist, low-slung building that opened in 1953 --- to attending the Pine Avenue School in Bethpage, another classic modernist low-slung building, just opened that year! I have only a vague memory of my teachers (their names are lost) other than they were young women and very warm and friendly. ALL of that was a stark contrast to what I encountered when we moved to Bay Shore, I was assigned to attend the Fourth Avenue School. The Fourth Avenue School was built in 1893 and was condemned and ordered closed by July 1, 1956 ---- meaning I got to go there from March until June as the last leg of my First-Grade year. The distinct features I recall from my time there were desks bolted into the floor, with each equipped with a circular hole for an ink bottle and a boy’s room that did not have FLUSH toilets! That’s right --- outhouse style stalls with a hole sitting above a receptacle that was emptied . . . once a week? The school was closed because of “sanitation” reasons. Indeed. I do also remember my teacher was Miss Weiler. My recollection is that she was very old and may have come with the building. She reminded me of my great-grandmother, a Bohemian immigrant, whose gray hair was always in a bun and who viewed the world through wire-rimmed “granny” glasses. There’s little else I remember about first grade itself, but I did come out knowing how to read and write and cipher a bit.

Granddaughter Grace is completing 5^th grade and will be off to the King School in the fall. My fifth-grade experience was similar to hers in that I, like Grace, had a male teacher for the first time. Mr. Devine had been a Marine in WWII (making him close to my Dad’s mid-30’s age) and it was, as I recall, a good year. I was now attending the new South Country School --- which had opened in 1957, just as my brother was entering kindergarten and I was staring 3^rd grade --- and, like South Bay and Pine Avenue, was another classic, one-story, low-slung building comprised of “wings” with a cafeteria, auditorium, and gymnasium attached. South Country had been designed to be a K to 6 school but, as the Baby Boom continued to explode, my class would be off to the Bay Shore Junior High for 6^th grade --- as it became a 6 though 8 school. So, just as Gracie is facing a transition to a new place with a different culture and a whole bunch of new schoolmates, I can clearly relate to where she is, recalling my own journey. Carol Marie and I were talking to her brother the other night about his recent retirement and how life really is a series of transitions, and how important it is to remember we have done this before. As I watch the grandkids in their current transitions, I readily recall my own --- and that’s surprisingly gratifying.

Luke is currently completing his freshman year at Greenwich High School here in Connecticut and it’s been interesting watching him navigate the new terrain of high school --- academically, athletically, and socially. It’s a major transition in Greenwich because there are three middle school’s feeding into the high school, so students go from being in an environment ---- physically and socially --- which is only one-third of what the high school is. Add to that all the new teachers and subjects, coaches and counselors and it can be quite daunting. It was less so for me back in 1963-64 because Bay Shore Junior High had absorbed all the students from the town’s elementary schools (4) --- and my class was spending a fourth year in the school because of construction expanding the size of the high school. We were top dogs in the school and, if you know history, 1963-64 was momentous! By the time the year turned from 1963 to 1964 we had experienced the JFK assassination and had a first taste of The Beatles! (Note: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” hit the NYC air waves in December of 1963) And, of course, the Beatles were only the tip of the “British Invasion,” introducing us to the Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Spencer Davis Group, and many, many others. Freshman year for me was memorable for two things: sports teams and Harry Anderson, my English teacher. As far as sports went, I won the starting quarterback position, was the starting point guard on the basketball team, and played first base and batted third on the freshman baseball team --- all of which was fun because I was playing with a bevy of talented athletes and our teams were quite successful. But Harry Anderson was the real bright spot of the year --- a smart young teacher who spoke to us like we were intelligent people and brought an understated passion for literature to life, class after class. In retrospect, Harry Anderson set me on my path to teaching while instilling a lifelong love of writing and literature.

Casey Baker is currently wrapping up his Junior year at Greenwich High and is already a two-time State Champion in football, where he was the starting center this year and will be one of the team’s Captains next season. He’s finishing up the year taking SATs and AP exams while prepping for the gridiron season, going to the Prom, and doing all those things your penultimate year in high school brings ---- which means considering colleges you might apply to in the Fall. It’s a lot, for sure. Despite my Junior year in high school being exactly Sixty Years ago, I remember it pretty clearly. Once again, sports were a major component of my life (Varsity football and basketball were both very successful but baseball was out of the picture) and there was a surprise inclusion in the National Honor Society --- I didn’t realize I had done all that well academically (not for lack of working but more because sports were far more a focus than school). Once again, an English teacher --- Lester Faggiani --- had a huge impact on my growing interest in writing and literature and, again, was undoubtedly a reason teaching became more and more my likely path.

The only thing relating to thinking about going to college that I clearly recall from Junior year occurred late in the spring, reading Newsday (“The Long Island Newspaper”). John Curtis was a Senior at Smithtown High School --- a Bay Shore rival in League II. I knew John a bit because we were both left-handed quarterbacks and played against one another in basketball --- so we had some opportunities to talk during each season. I was shocked to read, on the Newsday Sports page, that John had turned down admission to Yale and was going to attend Clemson, in South Carolina. To my mind, how could anyone turn down a chance to go to Yale? In John’s case, however, the reason was simple: he was an excellent (left-handed) pitcher, and, at Clemson, he would get to play a 50-game season and be scouted by MLB (something that seldom, if ever, happened in the Ivy League). As it turned out, John left Clemson after his sophomore year, drafted by the Boston Red Sox and, by 1970 was pitching in the Majors --- a career that would last until 1984. Clearly, John knew what he was doing but, the lesson for me was this: I knew John enough to know that if he could get into Yale, maybe I could, too! I knew there was no Major League future for me so if I could somehow get into Yale, as John did, I would not turn it down.

Cody Baker, our oldest grandchild/son, is wrapping up his second year in college, having spent last year at Emerson College in Boston before transferring to the University of Virginia, where he is thriving. It’s hard to believe he is halfway through his undergraduate career ---- which he’s enjoying quite a bit now that he’s in Charlottesville. From where I sit it looks like Cody is taking advantage of what UVa has to offer while enjoying all that a great college environment has beyond its classrooms. Again, I have pretty clear recollections of where I was at the same point in my life. By the end of sophomore year in May of 1969 we all knew that, in the Fall of that year, Yale would become a co-educational school --- having admitted rising sophomore and junior transfers as well as freshmen women. And we knew ours would be the first co-ed graduating class in Yale’s history. We also knew it would be chaotic (what would the exact housing arrangements be, what would it be like to have undergraduate women in our classes, etc.?) and there would be a certain amount of changing the tire on the car while it was moving. What fun! I was also looking forward to working at Flynn’s Restaurant and Hotel on Fire Island as a waiter --- which meant free room and board while living at the beach all summer. Additionally, my brother and I had already purchased tickets for the “Woodstock Music and Art Fair” (at $18 each, for 3 days in August) --- which was starting to build momentum as more and more big-name acts signed up to perform. We did go --- but that’s a story for another time.

As my birthday and reunion approach, then, I find I’ve been given this wonderful window in Time, a prism provided by the energetic, athletic, smart grandchildren whose families I’ve been lucky enough to become a part of. Looking at each, in the particular moment of life they are currently experiencing, I am able to time-travel (selectively, of course) and remember so much of my own journey over these many years. “Every old person knows what it’s like to be young . . . .” And, knowing that, we can more deeply revel the moments we get to experience each day as we continue our journey around the sun.