Where have we been all this time? I’ll tell you. Got a minute?
I’ll start with your note of December 9 in which you take on my pleonastic Class Book essay. OK, OK, you’re right. I larded it on (and only overshot the 500-word limit by a little), with delirious and overwrought descriptors. I failed to cut the adverbs and the adjectives, I loved them so.
What I needed to do was to come clean with my privileged classmates and stop fooling them: here, taste the fuzzy end of my lollipop, and feel the adjectives and adverbs that inform you what my life was about. Besides, it was my essay, and I could write whatever it pleased me to write, no editors or censors, and guaranteed publication. Besides, I was not alone; there were many others like me, breaching the walls of the institution.
An example…
To this day, John Beinecke still gives me the thousand-yard stare when we cross paths. But I won’t really know for sure anymore since I’m too busy giving him the ten-thousand-yard stare. JB, meet JP. I hope he was assigned a room at Berkeley College that looked out on his ancestor’s gift to Yale, so he would know every day by looking out his bedroom window that he was NOT the one who created the fortune.
Yeah, JB should know of my down-market life story: a long way from his own genteel green-stamp silver-spoon origin. I wouldn’t mind so much if I didn’t run into him so often, and have to do the stare dance every time. There was the time at the Yale Club when you and I had lunch, and, sure enough, there was JB lurking at the table behind me, staring into the middle distance.
What was so astonishingly graceless of then-Yale was to assign me to bus dishes at the TD dining room, so everybody who ate there could see I was a bursary student. At least it wasn’t my college, but in freshman year we weren’t in our colleges that much, but rather in the Old Campus. At the time I didn’t care, I was so happy just to be there. Bruce Bolnick and I had a great time yanking the unfinished meal plates out from under their faces; apologizing obsequiously just before spilling stuff on them; and other such frat-boy hijinks. I gather Yale College stopped giving out such assignments shortly after.
Now and again, I wonder. We were in the same college, saw each other regularly. What happened anyway? We could have been friends, or just polite; instead, he became an unwelcome thorn in my side. Beats me. Sadly, it still rankles.
There. That feels better. A refreshing digression. But I’m stalling, so let’s get to the story.
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On a Friday in early December of 2019, some months after my 50th College Reunion, Myra and I spent a lovely day in New Haven. The food had been good, the museum engaging, the campus settling into crisp winter light. We were at peace. We drove home along the Housatonic, through some of Connecticut’s more hardscrabble neighborhoods. Once in the higher elevations, and past the Yale boathouse, the hardscrabble fell away, the woods got thicker, the light started to fade.
Arriving at our house in Bethel, we found our thirty-six-year old son Alec, as though he were coming to greet us on the driveway. I stopped alongside him, “Hey, what’s for your birthday dinner?” With the light nearly gone, I cannot quite see his face. He says nothing, but leans his head toward my window. Then I see that the left side of his face is badly bruised, including the eye, as though he had fallen. We ask him, “What happened?” He doesn’t realize he is hurt. We walk him to the house, “When did you fall?” He is totally confused and doesn’t know. He says, vaguely, “It was three days ago.” But, we know, he was fine until that afternoon.
And that was that. We drive him to the emergency room; the trauma team assembles and goes into action. Within an hour of our finding him on the driveway, he was on his way to a CAT scan. Myra and I are ushered to a waiting area, promising they would bring us back to Alec as soon as the scan was completed. After an hour without a word, we go looking for the doctor, who informs us that as soon as we had left and they were about to take him to radiology, he had a second seizure, a continuation of the first. So that’s what brought him down. The doctor: “There is something in there, and we have to take it out.” The trauma team hands him off.
He was admitted immediately, starting up a complex mechanism of checks, tests, scans, families and friends gathering, crowding and stepping over each other, filling the entire weekend. The good news: All the neurological tests are good; he is fully aware and alert, no longer disoriented, physically strong and coördinated. He is in bed and on anti-seizure medication. Other than a bruised face, he appears fine. For now.
On Monday, we began organizing his brain surgery. Not a moment to waste. Forget trying for Yale-New Haven, or Memorial Sloan Kettering. We’re staying right here. We meet the surgeon, a beautiful, young, nerdy doctor, assisted by the older professional from his practice. A spot had opened up in the operating room: by Tuesday morning, Alec was in surgery. Six hours later, he was back, head bandaged and groggy. By the next morning, he was walking the halls, and going up and down the practice stair. Truly.
The tumor, of course, was malignant, stage three. Then the MSK lab damaged the tumor sample in transit. Boobs. No matter. We met with the surgeon: “I got 80 to 90% of it; any more would have caused potential damage to brain tissue.” OK, fine, let’s move on. Next stop, radiation and chemo-therapy at Yale-New Haven. We meet his neuro-oncologist, another young, nerdy guy, also beautiful man. Alec’s age, and the best at what he does. He says to Alec: “You ready for this? We’re going to be together for a long time. Let’s get to work.” And they did.
Six weeks of daily radiation followed along with daily chemotheraphy. Alec in tears on the floor of the shower, collecting his beautiful red/auburn curly hair. Then chemo for one week a month for twelve months. Meanwhile the quarterly MRIs show small signs of improvement. Dr. Blondin, with his big ears and joyful smile, keeps us alive. “We are going to knock this out for the foreseeable future.” No oncologist ever says that unless he means it, right? Then one day he says, “There’s nothing in there.” Sweeter words. We all laughed at that one: seeing daylight between his ears. It’s more than four years since Alec’s first encounter with the enemy.
Still, every three months, I die a little, as Cole Porter’s lyric tells us.
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Meanwhile, back at the homestead, life reared up again: our daughter Rachel became pregnant and, a little over a year after Alec’s fall, in April of 2021 gave birth to our first grandchild, a boy, Zaki. That kind of event also concentrates the mind. He has filled at least two dozen people’s lives with humor and laughter; he is a card, a joker, he understands everything, pushes our buttons, and knows our love for him is unconditional.
So, whatever it is that JB has on me, it is nothing like what I have on him, not even close. *
