33. How Do I Sign Up For Your Gig?
The Year of Paying Attention
I was dozing on my terrace in the hot afternoon sun, wasting a few of the precious remaining minutes of my life playing online Scrabble. One might think, sultry summer day, no pressing engagements, what better way to spend an hour? But I was thinking — my life is a pointless waste. To counter this self-criticism, I rose, donned gym clothes, started a couple of loads in the basement laundry room, and headed for the little gym in the building, thinking — my life is a vain effort to stave off decrepitude until my body or my mind stops working. I straddled the elliptical machine and got my heart rate up. I lifted a few weights. I hydrated.
Back in the laundry room I texted Sarah to come help fold sheets. She arrived with a smile. I saw JC’s name light up my cell phone, and decided I’d call him from upstairs. I knew he’d suffered a setback, and had been taken back to the hospital from his rehab facility. Back upstairs, I listened to his message. “Hey, Tim. It’s JC… looks like I’m going to leave the hospital this evening, so I called to inform you of that. I’m okay, I guess, really, but honestly I am psychologically not in a good place. I’m getting depressed in my situation. And I feel alone. I don’t know what the future holds. I’m just scared. “
JC’s voice got shaky. “Don is going to come on Saturday… I’m not in a good space.” Then silence. I imagined my friend in his hospital room, waiting for our friend Don to drive eight hours to help him out, nobody like a wife or a sibling or an adult child to help him through his crisis. He doesn’t have a terrace where he can lie in the sun, or a partner to meet him in the laundry room, or a daughter to take out to lunch. I’ll call him back in a few minutes, and resist the urge to tell him what he should do, because god knows I have no idea.
***
I was cruising around Manhattan in linen shorts and sneakers when I had one and then another encounter with friends “from the program,” as we say, both around my age. Ron gave me the once-over and said, “I want your job.” He knows I don’t have one, and I know he’s ready to join my ranks. Later I saw Andrew, a salesman suited up on 6th Ave, who asked, “How do I sign up for your gig?” These guys want what I have; why is it so hard to be happily retired? Just writing that word makes me want to qualify it, find some other phrase — because, please understand, I am developing a group coaching business, if I didn’t tell you about it.
Over lunch I asked daughter Ellen to come to New Orleans for a weekend — she’d love to! Maybe her sister will join… if her sister is speaking to me before November rolls around. Ellen returned to work, and I decided to stop into the Museum of Modern Art, to wander around the exhibit Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends. One of his “combines,” signature work made of paint and newspaper and charcoal and stuff you’d find in a kitchen drawer, is entitled Charlene. Rauschenberg made it in 1954, when I was a newborn and he was 29. The combine includes an actual letter from his mother.
I was 25 when I moved to New York and started working at ABC TV, my cubicle just around the corner from where Charlene is on the wall. My work ID got me into MoMA for free. I’d go at lunchtime and sit in the outside sculpture garden, unencumbered but feeling trapped in a desk job, and anxious for my adult life to truly commence. I can’t accurately recall my state of mind from nearly forty years ago, living with my Boston comrade Charlie. I’d acquired some friends at my job, with whom I’d go out and drink too much after work. There’s a snapshot from this period, taken in a mirror, me and a group of these buddies in somebody’s apartment. I was in a blackout.
Looking at Charlene with his mother’s letter glued to it, I recalled my mother’s Christmas decoration instructions. Hauled up from the storage bin in the basement, out would come the tree ornaments, and the strands of lights, and in its own box, the angel for the top of the tree. On each decoration box were hand-written directions: when to place the Christmas tree apron around the base (last), when to reach up and put the angel in on top of the tree (only after the lights are strung). After the divorce, I brought my mother’s instructions and decorations to her ex-daughter-in-law’s new apartment, so her granddaughters might follow the proper sequence, even though her son is no longer there.
Next week: None Of Us Will Ever Be Famous
