A lucky man admits to happiness, and why not?
The Column: 04.19.24
Joyful moments have been chasing me all week, the gorgeous singing of “O for a thousand tongues to sing” at St. Michael’s last Sunday, the happiness at 8 a.m. of little kids on their way to school on Columbus Avenue, the pleasure of singing with my pals Heather and Christine the Grateful Dead’s “Brokedown Palace,” the euphoria of an eight-month-old great-nephew as spoonfuls of pablum were brought to his mouth, and of course the arrival of spring itself after this weird unwinter and now tulips and jonquils and hyacinths in the park, plus the surprise of hearing a woman in Maryland whistling impressively through her front teeth. It’s not all raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but I must say, it’s darned joyful.
Ask a Midwesterner, “How are you?” and we tend to say, “Not bad” or “It could be worse,” feeling it’d sound glib or boastful to say, “Delighted,” and we men in particular tend to adopt an easygoing grumpiness as suitable for all occasions, but I think it’s bad luck not to acknowledge that I am very fortunate to have added my tongue to the other 999 at church, to lift my voice with the two women’s in trio to an audience in Vermont, to see that ecstatic little boy finding the joy in pablum that the Dead tried to find in acid. I am tired of conversations with fellow libs that start with ritual lamentations about the horrors we read about in the paper. We are right to be aware of the horrors, but the display of outrage at cruelties I haven’t experienced strikes me as show-offy. Donate money to organizations that relieve suffering. Volunteer at the food shelf, visit the sick, tutor the needy children, do good where you can, and count your blessings.
My friend Jasa just returned from India where she saw leopards and tutored young women in English reading skills and was delighted by the whole experience. She’s a better person than I, but I do what I can. I’m an old man, I’m a little unsteady afoot, I have double vision: want to hear my complaints? Well, neither do I. On my phone, I have a video clip of the bright-eyed boy in the highchair, mouth open, squeaking with pleasure as the mush comes to his mouth. The beauty of Apple, putting joyfulness at our fingertips. I also have a clip of my daughter screaming in delight on a raft as waves wash toward Daddy the videographer, wetting his pants — footage of my sweetheart approaching with a birthday cake with candles that look like a major forest fire. Imagine if Adam had taken the iPhone that Eve handed him and made a video of the Garden and his naked mate and felt delight rather than shame.
When I was in eighth grade, I read A.J. Liebling in The New Yorker and so my course in life was set. I wanted to be an old Jew writing about boxing, newspapers, fine dining, and France. I didn’t succeed but I was befriended by the editor Roger Angell in my twenties and set about writing and am still at it. I came to New York in search of the writing life and I settled near Isaac Bashevis Singer’s building on 86th & Broadway. From my window I could see the buildings of Scott Fitzgerald’s “lost city, wrapped cool in its mystery.” I rode the B train to 42nd Street — I stood in the front of the first car as we came through the tunnel — and sat in the magnificent reading room of the library and wrote. In the spring of 1992, I had lunch with a violinist at a restaurant on Broadway at 90th and we’re still married. I am maintained by her love and loyalty and also her wise advice. “You need to get out more,” she says. She’s right.
I came to the city, as E.B. White said, prepared to be lucky and I was. Thoreau came to New York, walked miles and miles around town, felt there were simply too many people here, and his loathing of New York inspired him to go to the woods and write Walden. I believe a person could write a better Walden sitting in the library on 42nd but never mind me. Thoreau concluded, The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. He was in the wrong part of town, that’s all. He should’ve gone up to 90th and gotten himself a good meal and a fine wife.
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I, too, was befriended by Roger Angell, from afar--thirty-some years ago he published one of my stories and changed my life. You, too, befriended me from afar--by reading a birthday wish for my first-born [now 48], by the shape of your storytelling, the precise wisdom of a man's glee at having made a direct hit on a squirrel's nether regions with hot sauce fired from a squirt gun a moment later realizing that his young daughter, a squirrel lover, was watching from the other window. And so many other fine things, including the locution, from today's writing: "an easygoing grumpiness . . . suitable for all occasions" . . . oh and for the riff on how one responds to "How are you?" In my version: I was taken to task for answering, "Fair to middlin'"--not sufficiently chipper according to the Californian who asked the question. I said, "Actually, I'm from New England. Fair to middlin' is pretty darn good, expressing an openness to upward movement while avoiding excessive chipperness and not unware of the other shoe's quantum state, dropping and not-dropping. Be well, old grump.
I have to admit that there's a certain solace in grumpiness and I think that it's in a father's Contract of Employment that he inflict it on his children who will roll their eyes and ignore it.
It's wonderful to read this happy note that you've shared with us. I agree with you when you express your feelings. I took my wife out to the shop this morning (we're newly retired, we can do it) and I've just returned with her from an afternoon stroll round the local streets. I've read, I've written short comments, I'm going to finish the chapter of the book I'm re-reading, catch up with my Bible reading and write a short commentary on Isaiah. I have a wonderful wife who I married just over thirty years ago, two children who I love and my daughter's boyfriend who I look on as almost another son. I eat well, I sleep well, I'm recovering from a time in hospital. I'm looking forward to a family holiday in Northern Ireland and a couple of nights ago I spoke to a friend who I hadn't spoken to for 25 years.
Though I don't deserve it, life is good and I thank God for it. The atheist can thank whatever he thinks most precious.
Gratitude is a very underrated part of life.