Every day since the Fourth Sunday in Lent has felt a bit like a slow-burn conspiracy of a malevolent universe to overwhelm me.
About three weeks ago, at Trinity, I started in earnest some of the more engrossing renovations tasked to me by a very enthusiastic, newly seated vestry. (Far be it for me to suggest that this may not have been the most ideal timing.)
Anyway, by the time the Last Sunday in Lent rolled around I was already reeling from these projects and the always inevitable onslaught of emails discussing them to death. Everything went off well enough, but I was beginning to slip, mentally fatigued and sleeping poorly as a result. And at precisely that moment, everything outside of work decided to leap cackling into the pile-on.
On Monday of last week, having worked my usual Saturday off, I made a trip with a small crew to twice load a pick-up truck with elaborate doors and wainscoting salvaged from an 1880s mansion about 20 minutes from Allentown. We were then tipped off that two houses on the outskirts of the city were slated for demolition and we had permission to salvage anything we deemed of historic or architectural value. We were already out, so we toured the place and made an inventory of things we would return to collect.
On Tuesday, I sat down to work again, but was presented with several hitherto undiscussed projects that needed fast turnaround. I plugged away at them as quickly as I was able without sacrificing quality, working well into the night.
Earlier in the day, I had also called to schedule an urology referral for a vasectomy consultation that I had been trying to fit into my calendar for more than a month. I was really hoping to have the surgery and be fully recovered before our summer vacation. I was told they could do Thursday at 3:30pm or… their next available opening was in late June. I agreed to do Thursday, cursing under my breath.
Wednesday morning, not particularly well-rested, I was asked if I could come and retrieve the most valuable pieces from the houses that were to be demolished. Apparently, the demolition was in fact slated to begin immediately, but had only been postponed due to the weather. I said, foolishly, that I could spare one hour and still have time to complete all of my work. Two of us spent a frenetic hour (and a half…) manually unscrewing the hinges of twelve doors, mostly late 19th century solid wood doors, but also three multi-paned bevel glassed doors from the 1920s. A third joined us to load them into a truck, I rushed home while they were being unloaded, and got back to work. In the evening, Oliver was suddenly sick with a severe stomach bug. We were awakened repeatedly throughout the night and got vanishingly little sleep.
Thursday, I woke up and realized with all the dawning awareness of a bag of bricks to the base of the skull that we had agreed to help dear friends of ours move house on Friday and Saturday. Oliver mostly relaxed in bed all day, the worst of the sickness transpiring overnight. I sat down at 7:30am and decided I would muscle through all of my outstanding tasks. Well, I tried, anyway. Several things were still undone, when I grabbed an Uber (because I did not have the luxury of frittering away time on the bus schedule) to the urologist, where I was admitted to an exam room and learned I had gained an additional ten pounds since last year, having gained ten pounds over the previous year.
Don’t worry, my vanity was able to stew while my thirty minute consultation ended up an hour long wait in the exam room before I was even seen. The doctor finally arrived, apologetic but having had to deal with a “bloody” emergency. I got pricked, poked, prodded, and fondled, afterwhich I was confirmed to be an eligible candidate.
Thereafter, I signed in triplicate and buried in peat a lot of legal documents verifying that I was of sound mind and fully cognizant that this was a permanent procedure, the reversal of which is ten times as expensive and has between a 50 – 80% success, decreasing every year post-surgery. Oh, also that they are not liable for persistent fertility or if my wife becomes pregnant, nor do they pay for paternity tests in that event. I pulled a grey hair out of my beard and said, “I’m entirely certain that I do not wish to be given up to an infant in my hoar hairs. Here, I’ll sign everything in the blood of my firstborn.”
On June 23, if all goes as scheduled, I will ipso facto incur my fourth excommunication latæ sententiæ from the Church of Rome.
Friday, I sat down at 6am to finish the rest of my work, then started preparing for… oh, wait, I was asked to participate in the Stations of the Cross at our parish, the Church of Mediator, at 5:30. So, I did that. And then I went over to our friend’s and from 8 until nearly midnight helped load most of the interior furniture into a 17’ truck and do some additional packing. I went home and died, I think. I got better. Which is only not unusual, I understand, this time of year.
Saturday morning, we had a slow start, Oliver was well, no one else was sick, so Jennifer took the boys to Bethlehem for their ballet classes. I returned to our friend’s at around 11:45 and helped finish tetrising the truck with boxes. Then we unloaded everything at their new place, Jennifer joined us with the boys at 2pm, we reloaded the truck, and unloaded it again. We got home at 9:30.
Palm Sunday, Oliver and Charles had to be at church at 8:15 to rehearse for the choir and the procession, respectively, for the 9am service. We got back around 11. I then received a call asking if I could fill-in last minute at the salvage warehouse. Since, I haven’t volunteered very many weekends in recent months, I agreed, and so I opened up at noon and closed a little early at 3:30pm. Then I very quickly ran to my barber, so I could get a haircut before Easter and not, yet again, neglect myself and feel poorly for it ahead of a holiday.
And then I was asked if we could finish salvaging those two houses from earlier in the week, this time just two of us, because demolition was already beginning. We went over at 5:30 and didn’t return until 9:30.
Yesterday, I awoke and was reminded rudely by automated phone nag that I was supposed to have my first preventative care visit in nineteen years with a bona fide primary care physician. Until 2020, Jennifer and I were uninsured, the first couple of years of the pandemic were not really conducive to establishing primary care, in the meantime she took a new job, we changed insurance, and it wasn’t until January that I put my foot down and said we need to find a doctor. I had had a telehealth new patient appointment in late February, during which smoking cessation, my persistently high cholesterol (something I knew from the CVS wellness check-ups needed for annual insurance enrollment), and the vasectomy were discussed, and after which metabolic, blood count, and lipid panels were ordered.
Guess who had been so engulfed that he forgot he needed more labs done until the morning of his appointment?
So, I put down the coffee Jennifer had sweetly left for me on my side table before taking a sip, miserably got dressed, and walked uncaffeinated four and a half blocks to the nearby hospital, walked into the lab, let my veins into a tube , walked home, imbibed a lot of coffee too quickly, milled about, made plans for my work week, and then decided suddenly — fuck it — I really need to get outside, stop whatever it is I was planning on stressing myself out with, or I’m going to end up in a strait-jacket.
It was warm and sunny, so I walked around the city for nearly two hours, dropped in on the parish church and chatted up and kvetched at the rector, came home as school was letting out, told Charles that Oliver was in his after-school journalism program and that he could just chill until Mama got out of work in less than an hour, hopped in another Uber, and went to the doctor.
I lucked out and got a living saint for physician, who asked me questions with actual concern and listened patiently to my burgeoning middle-aged anxieties, and then went on to break down my lab work (which my phone had notified me had already been processed a few hours before by some magic of modernity, I guess) and the physical exam she performed:
Despite the fact that I have not been seen for preventative care in nearly two decades, that I suffered serious illness and physical trauma about a decade ago, that I have smoked for 14 years (albeit, only a few of those, heavily)… despite these things, every single indicator showed perfect, in fact robust, health; but also that I was right to be concerned about my familial history of heart disease and my own persistently high LDL cholesterol; that I was right to be haunted by the risk of eventual pulmonary obstruction if I continued smoking.
However, my heart was currently perfect, my lungs sounded excellent, and my latent, previously recessive Ashkenazi neuroticism genes activating at exactly this point in my life meant that I was low-key panicked over and ready to do something about all of the right things.
In the midst of all of the unendingness of the past few weeks, this was pretty much the best experience. Does anyone ever have a good experience with a doctor? But I actually felt uplifted and hopeful, despite the undercurrent of exhaustion.
Having discussed the matter with her twice, I said I think I wanted to try a non-nicotine cessation drug like Chantix, which blocks the nicotine-receptors disrupting the reward response of smoking. I have no interest in nicotine replacement therapies or clinical applications of Wellbutrin, both of which replace a dependency with a dependency. My attempt to quit cold turkey failed, not because of the several days of acute withdrawal which I muscled through, but because I was losing my mind during the everyday stresses of life and work without having my accustomed crutch. I think that most people who successfully quit cold turkey do not have a place selling cigarettes across the street. Anyway, she explained that at my age and in my health, my only real risk was uncomfortably lucid dreams. Eh. I’ve lived through worse.
She neither tried to encourage me nor dissuade me from beginning to take statins, but said she’d like to follow up in three months to see how I’ve come along in quitting smoking, to run a lipid panel again then, and to see if smoking cessation has helped move the needle down. If it proves to be more genetic predisposition that’s anything else, the worst that beginning statins young can do (apart from extremely rare side effects) is prevent plaque from accumulating in my arteries earlier and longer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That was yesterday. This morning I woke up, another solar revolution completed and 34 years old, and just got back to it: the work, the chores, the contortions of Holy Week in Princeton and here in Allentown, as employee and as congregant. I finished the plans for Easter dinner and even made myself (and the fam, but really me) a lovely salmon en papillote with lemon, leeks, capers, and sweet peppers; roasted fingerling potatoes; and sautéed spring vegetables. Jennifer acquired a cherry pie. I blew out a single candle. And it was good.
The remainder of the week won’t actually let up or give me much of an opportunity to breathe, but I do have a pair of traditional grey flannel trousers arriving by post tomorrow. And I am a vain fuck with a crooked jaw, who enjoys being a tailor’s dummy and is unapologetic.
So, you know, it’s time for more of that I think. I’ve decided that I’m getting several pairs of all-leather cap-toes and brogues, a dozen or so Pantharella ribbed worsted merino wool over-the-calf socks, maybe even a couple of silk pair, and a goddam motherfuckin’ block printed 18th century banyan this year. I’m done being cheap when it comes to myself, always too hesitant to really indulge when I’m the only beneficiary.
And, you know what? These are my shallow little rewards and I’m fine with them being shallow. After these past weeks, months, and years…. After a decade and a half of almost never saying no, hardly pushing back against requests I know to be mistakes and agreeing to do work I know to be misguided, after shouldering the burden and accepting the blame when these things inevitably go wrong, as I knew they would…
After all of this time saying yes to the people and ideas and institutions and things I care about so deeply, over and over and over, even when the yes was wrong, or stupid, or plainly self-harming. Yes, to Jesus, to his church, to his faithful. Yes, to this woman, to her happiness and comfort; to these boys, to their education and enrichment; to our home and our city, to its sustainability and resiliency. Yes, to this place, this built environment, this ecosystem, these people. Yes, to the things that everyone else neglects — to preserve, to maintain, to repair. Yes, to the friends, to the neighbors, to the passerby, to the waif, to the stray, to the old widow across the alley who asks for entirely too many cigarettes.
Yes, yes, yes.
Well, I’m also going to say yes to lined calfskin uppers, cork midsoles, and leather soles all which mold to your feet until you hardly feel them. I’m done saying yes to polyurethane and rubber and landfill; or flimsy leather and cardboard. I’m going to say yes to durable socks that don’t go damp and stick and stink and chafe, rather than darning the holes in the heel and toe of cheap cotton ones I bought ten years ago. I’m going to say yes to an ornamental house robe of unparalleled magnificent bastardry because life is too short to wait for the opportunity to sport flamboyant textiles.
I’m also going to say yes to a daily ninety minute walk through the parks and city streets, in place of the typical ninety minute commute. I’m going to say yes every day to trees overhead and birds in bushes and people laughing on porches and kids misbehaving on street corners. I’m going to say yes to getting back to cooking more interesting things, delightful and unexpected things, rather than the rutted repetitions of a too busy life. I’m going to say yes to planting more and sinking my fingers into the soil more. I’m going to say yes to working in the wood-shop more, finishing any of a dozen uncompleted projects, while my fingers still have enough flexion to do it, before the occupational deterioration of my tendons sets in. I’m going to say yes to hearing the symphony orchestra more. I’m going to say yes to attending the theater more.
I’m going to say yes to doing less by doing more that is live-giving.
And, yes, I’m going to say yes to disrupting this one day of the year, which everyone is always saying is mine, even though I think that’s silly, to not punctuate my every thought with some deeper, keyed-in, seasonally-appropriate theological hedging. I’m just going to say yes to having a reason to keep an undiseased heart ticking and lungs full.
«Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.» That is to say, after Pascal, “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.”