The Newell Post

Yesterday I had an appointment with my hematologist/oncologist. I meet with him three or four times a year, usually on the day when I have one of my monthly IVIG treatments. This time I was told that he wanted to see me in between treatments. This raised a red flag in my brain.

I was worried that maybe there was something wrong. I told myself that if there were something wrong he would have seen me right away. Nevertheless, as I drove to Southampton I had my worry hat on.

Going to the doctor never really bothers me or causes me any stress but sometimes I think about the time I took my car in for an oil change and was told my gillhoooly rod was out of whack. My care doesn’t have a gillhooly rod and probably your’s doesn’t either but mechanics have a language all their own and I throw myself on their mercy whenever my car is in the shop. So, despite feeling well and anticipating that I would have a good check up result, I still had a little angst as I was driving for my appointment.

I began to think what would happen if I were given bad news. How would my view of the world change? Bucket lists are big these days and I hate that concept. I have been fortunate in getting just about everything I ever wanted. Of course, a Ranger win last night would have really made me happy, but aside from thatI have just about what I need.

But the thing that scares me most about bucket lists is that they seem to be so finite. It’s a list after all and has a beginning and an end. What happens if you achieve all your list items? Do you merely check out and say Ta Ta everyone? It’s not for me.

I have always subscribed to the concept that Wanting is better than Having. How many times in our lives have we pursued a goal or a purchase only to achieve our heart’s desire and say, “Is that all there is?”

Having an unrealized goal keeps us hungry, keeps us in motion, keeps us alive. “I won’t have a bucket list,” I tell myself. But I will see things differently if I get bad news.

It’s a short drive from East Quogue to Southampton but I wasn’t even out of Hampton Bays when, talking to myself (it’s how I write), I say, “Why do I have to wait for Bad News in order to see things differently? Why not let Good News make you see things differently. I finish this thought as I get into the village of Southampton. As I pass the Southampton Movie Theater I note that “The Fault In Our Stars” is playing. Oh Bugger!

This only sidetracks me for a second and I continue my self-examination regarding seeing things differently. I decide that I must change my view of life. Lately I have bemoaned my commute much more than I ever have in the last thirty years. I always was able to put a positive spin on commuting three hours each way every day. The train was my “Den on wheels” where I could read and listen to music and commune with my thoughts. It’s where I could write and record my life experience. I could even have a beer on the ride home. But lately it has been unbearable.

I vowed in my newfound sense of self that I would enjoy the ride.

Then, as I got deeper into the Village, I was just about to let “let little things bother me” as my mother would say. It was like a smack at the back of my head when I knew for certain that the train was not the only ride I must enjoy.

I long for the day when my train ride is over. Retirement seems like a vacation to me. Maybe it shouldn’t? Maybe I shouldn’t be so eager to get off the train? Maybe it’s the ride that matters most when all is said and done?

I had a good report from my doctor. In fact, we talked more about the Rangers than we did about me. He said I was doing great but Nash and Richards had to score.

The ride continues and I mean to enjoy it.

I used to be a fan of Touched By An Angel. I guess it was a time in my life when I really needed a little Divine Intercession. But as I recall, I would no sooner finish watching an episode then switch to the next entry of The Sopranos. Nevertheless, the concept of Angels intrigues me still.

Eileen and I had a recent discussion about Angels and she is a believer in their existence and involvement in our lives. I am not so sure that she isn’t right because I believe in them too and I have a few examples of their intercession in my life and they are the subject of Faith, Friends, And Automobiles.

On the first occasion of Angel spotting that occurred in my life, I was actually the Angel. It was a Sunday evening and I was driving back to the Bronx after dropping Eileen off at St Vincent’s School of Nursing. I was driving my 1973 Chevy Vega. Having skimped on my car purchase by not buying the Nova, it should be no surprised that I avoided the toll on the Tri Borough Bridge and went by way of the no toll Madison Avenue Bridge and 138th street. Those of you who have made this maneuver will recall the ramp coming onto 138th and the lovely environs in which you were deposited.

Just as I was coming off the ramp and making the right turn towards the Bruckner Expressway I saw a stalled car on the side of the street. It was my friend Paul of Pat and Paul fame. He looked at me as I pulled up as if I were a messenger from God. I think I was. I was there just at the right moment. Fifteen minutes earlier and I would have missed him. Had I opted to pay the 50 cent toll I would have missed him. It was God who determined that I would be late and cheap all at the same time. As my wife Eileen is often heard to say, “There are no coincidences.” You will read this statement very often as I proceed.

Fast forward a couple of years and in that same 1973 Chevy Vega Eileen and I are heading into the Bronx from our apartment in Flushing. We were on the Van Wyck heading to the Whitestone Bridge. Just as we approached the bridge my Vega started acting, well, like a Vega. I was able to goose it up the bridge to the last exit in Queens. As we rolled down the Third Avenue exit in Whitestone I looked behind in the rear view mirror and saw Pat and Paul in their car. They just happened to be on their way from Brooklyn going into the Bronx, too. They returned the favor that I had extended a few years earlier. There are no coincidences.

The next visitation occurred sometime in the summer of 1977. Still driving that same 1973 Chevy Vega which I had just picked up from our Irish mechanic, Sean, I stopped off to see my parents at 1261 Leland. Sean was a great mechanic. I asked him how much it would cost to fix my electric rear window defroster and he replied. “How much could it cost?” I never got a real answer and I never fixed the defroster.

Anyway when I was at 1261 I called my friend PJ to confirm that he was coming out to Flushing so that we could go for a run and thereby justify the beer that we would have afterwards. But PJ cancelled. He wasn’t up to driving, running, or drinking. I was disappointed but what the heck?

I set off for Flushing and as I paid the toll on the Bronx side and reved up my four cylinder, aluminum block animal of a car, the very thing that had caused me to take the car to Sean in the first place happened again. As I accelerated the manifold pipe fell out of the manifold and the car sounded like one of those funny cars that used to pop wheelies nine feet in the air. Noise wasn’t my only problem as I was now dragging this pipe underneath my chassis. Once again I got off the Whitestone Bridge at the first exit.

I didn’t know what to do so I called PJ. He was tying up my manifold pipe fifteen minutes later despite the fact that he had been too tired to drive, run, or drink. Now most people would just see this as an extemely nice thing done by an extremely good friend. I used to think that and, in fact, I used this example of friendship in my religion class that I taught at St Vito’s. Had I known better I would have said that PJ was an Angel that night but he never knew it and, until recently, neither did I.

For the next angelic tale we really have to go back to the future. I was working at Columbia and I was still looking to go back into teaching. I had an interview somewhere in the town of Islip. I was driving into work and in those days I was driving a 1975 Mercury Monarch. This was an eight cylinder car that was bad on gas and that we bought twelve hours before the beginning of the gasoline crisis of 1979. Anyway, it was now 1985 and the car was on it’s last legs.

It didn’t have a check engine light as such but one that when lit stated “You’re killing me you bastard.”

So, here I was driving onto the Southern State Parkway near Babylon and my Monarch abdicates and goes and dies on me. I get to the shoulder and immediately a trooper comes and calls in for a tow truck. Not two minutes later I see this car pull off to the side of the highway and out of it came my nephew Jimmy.

“Uncle Jimmy what’s going on?”

Well, Jimmy was driving his parents’ car who were away on a European vacation. Jimmy drove me to the repair shop where we held a funeral service for the Monarch and then we went to his home in Baldwin. He then gave me the keys to the car for the week.

How did my nephew arrive just at the moment when I needed to be rescued? There are no coincidences.

There have been other instances of Divine Intercession that may be considered mere coincidence but I know better. Two people starting to say the same thing at the same time? That’s a coincidence.

People who just happen to appear out of nowhere when you need them most?

You decide.

To witness history is an extraordinary thing. To live it is even more special. On February 9, 1964 I, and millions of kids like me, got to do both.

Sunday morning started off like many Sunday mornings before it had. I got up for the 10 o’clock High Mass that my classmates and I had to sing in Latin. We sang the Asperges Me, the Kyrie, The Gloria, and the Credo. We listened to the Epistle that was read by one of my classmates and then came the Gospel that was read by Father Gorman. We put our weekly offering that was safely ensconsed in our envelopes into the basket that was manned by one of the ushers. Then we received Communion.

The Mass ended and we were set free to our respective homes and a nice Sunday breakfast. By now the Kennedy Assassination, while still remembered, was no longer something that kept us occupied, The only thing thirteen year olds across the country were thinking about was the Beatles. Tonight we would finally get to see and hear them live on TV.

Nearly twenty years later when John Lennon had been gunned down in front of his apartment building in New York I was taking a graduate education course and I had to explain to my professor why everyone had reacted the way they did to Lennon’s slaying. To put it in a context that I hoped he would understand I said, “It’s as if Shakespeare had been murdered.” He was surprised to learn that John Lennon could have been compared to Shakespeare. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him that Shakespeare couldn’t touch Lennon in the impact that he had on our culture. But back to 1964.

I don’t remember much of the rest of the day except as we got closer to 8 PM. The afternoon was prelude to the greatest moment of American History, well at least my subset of American History. I probably played some football. Maybe I had a hot chocolate at Hoch’s candy store? I may have talked to my friends about the upcoming Ed Sullivan Show anticipating the songs that the Beatles would sing. Whatever I did it was all very agonizing just trying to pass the time until the magic hour of 8 PM.

My brother Michael had a portable record player that operated on batteries, a birthday gift from his girlfriend Margaret. Rather than annoy my mother and father with the repetitive playing of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and “Please Please Me” I sought the quiet and privacy that our front bedroom offered. Finally, the moment I had been waiting for had arrived.

I was on the couch; my parents in their respective chairs. The introduction to the Ed Sullivan Show in the form of electrons beamed onto the big TV tube that was our TV screen hit my retinas and the theme song reached into my ears. Then Mr Sullivan came into view. For the first few moments I was back in the Loews American watching Bye Bye Birdie and Ed Sullivan was introducing Conrad Birdie. How prophetic had that movie been. Here was Ed Sullivan getting ready to introduce the Beatles who would soon make Conrad Birdie look like the opening act in a second rate music hall.

To be honest Ed Sullivan could be a little old fashioned and just a tad slow in getting on with the show. Tonight, however, he out did himself. First, he told us that the Beatles would entertain us two times, now and later in the show. In addition, the Beatles would be on next week and the week after. He then talked some more about how everyone had never witnessed the level of excitement that had occurred this week. Then, he introduced the Beatles and I was proven wrong.

Instead of opening with “I Want To Hold Your Hand” as I had predicted, they began their first set with “All My Loving” but no one was disappointed and nothing was ever quite the same again.

It’s hard not to get emotional when I think back to that night. So much changed afterwards that I can’t begin to describe. The music was exciting. The girls screaming were exciting and how I ever got to sleep that night I will never know.

I do remember school the next morning and thinking that at our weekly music class with Father Toplitsky he would surely have the Beatles to demonstrate one of his lessons. Sadly, I was once again proven to be wrong.

A couple of New Years ago I made a resolution to stop saying Two Thousand Twelve and start using Twenty Twelve. I reasoned that the new millennium had been acknowledged long enough. Here I am, two years later, and writing Twenty Fourteen seems as strange to me as saying Two Thousand Fourteen. I can’t believe that people back in Nineteen Fourteen experienced this same weirdness. Maybe it’s because that whether I say Twenty Fourteen or Two Thousand Fourteen, it still winds up being the year I turn sixty four which is still as hard to write as 64. That’s why I have given up on resolutions. The  calendar is urging me on to New Year’s Evolutions instead.

One of the common criticisms of good science fiction is that the author has not presented the world of the future within an evolutionary context. How did we get to this future world where a Federation creates a star ship capable of interplanetary flight and peopled by men and women who don’t mind dressing alike? The reader is required to suspend his or her dis-belief and just accept that all of the world’s problems have been solved except for those pesky Romulans and Klingons.

I propose that we start to fill in the gaps of this literary oversight. Let the evolution begin! At least mine.

Here are my evolutions for Twenty Fourteen:

1. I will no longer watch MSNBC; CNN; and FOX (this one will be easy to achieve.)

2. I will try to smile more.

3. I will try to worry less about what people think.

4. I really will try to eat less red meat.

5. I will enjoy sporting events without getting outraged that any team I root for could possibly lose.

6. I will appreciate the things that I achieve and not dwell on the things I could not.

7. I will rejoice at being sixty-four and 64 and I will play “When I’m Sixty-Four” on my sixty-fourth birthday.

8. I will make reading The Newell Post fun and not just a “Here he goes again” kinda thing.

9. I will vary my routines so that they no longer seem so routine.

10. I will learn to play “Words Of Love” on the guitar.

I am going to stop at ten. I think they are all doable. I know I will have to remind myself of  them from time to time and re-commit myself to achieving the evolution I deserve. There will be others mostly dealing with my spiritual growth but I am not ready to share them just yet. I am confident, however, that if I focus on these ten, I will be on my way to a better me which is all that we could ask of evolution.

I don’t know about you but Christmas Eve seems to be coming a lot faster than when I was a kid. Back then it seemed that the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve was an eternity. Now it seems that once Labor Day comes Christmas Eve is right around the corner. I know that getting older warps your perception of time but it really is getting out of control as far as I’m concerned.

But I guess time going faster does have its benefits. For one thing, it must mean that you are having fun.  It is a proven fact, after all, that bad times or at the least, unpleasant times, never seem to end fast enough. Whether it was waiting for the three o’clock bell to ring when you were in grammar school or the whine of the dentist’s drill as it was burrowing into your jaw to sound its last painful chord, you just couldn’t wait for the clock to fast forward you out of the chair and on your way. But as I have gotten older, I realize that what my Mother used to say when I was back on Leland Avenue in the Bronx, “Don’t be wishing your life away”, was sage advice.

Cherish the slowness of time’s passage. Enjoy the moment. Live in the moment. Christmas Eve is here again so you should drag your feet just a little to keep the New Year in its place. It wont be long until we’ll be struggling with using 2014 instead of 2013. (I don’t know about you but I still haven’t given up on using “19” and we are more than a decade into the new century!)

Now, as to making the season bright, here are my suggestions:

Mix up your Christmas music a bit. Don’t play the same old songs or sing the same old carols.

Watch something else besides White Christmas and A Christmas Story.

Read Bleak House in lieu of A Christmas Carol.

Have a milk shake instead of egg nog. By all means don’t have any whiskey!

While the above recipe for celebrating Christmas Eve may, in fact, make it last longer, it certainly will not make it worthy of remembrance. So, do as you have always done and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas…and a little Jameson while you’re at it.

https://www.createspace.com/3870864

Read about growing up in the wonderful world of The Bronx during the ’60’s and 70’s. Starting on November 22, 1963, Jimmy Newell guides you through life as it used to be and how it forever changed during this post war, baby boomer age.

National Cancer Survivor Day.

Sunday was National Cancer Survivor Day and Eileen and I celebrated it by attending a meeting of survivors. The day started off with a definition of “Survivor”. The broadest would include not just the cancer patient but the patient’s entire team. Family, friends, health care providers make up the team and when I think that Eileen and I each had our own team, the number of our combined team members is staggering. It continues to grow.

The next thing I learned is that I was embarrassed listening to the experiences of the panelists who offered their experiences with cancer and being a survivor. I had it so easy compared to many of the people who spoke and those in the audience who merely nodded their heads in agreement. When I think about what my own wife, Eileen, endured during her treatment and what she continues to endure, I feel kind of silly and ashamed thinking about the times I was feeling sorry for myself.

I also learned a new mantra. Victor not Victim. Again, I was humbled by the few times in my thirteen years of surviving when I felt sorry for myself. I will now try to live up to the concept of being a Victor and leave the Victim behind. I should have learned that lesson from Eileen but I have been known sometimes not to listen.

The other thing I learned is that Eileen and I have a story to tell. We started talking about it before yesterday’s meeting but Eileen got a head start at 3 AM this morning. An idea for a title of of the book that we will write is His Story Her Story: A Couple’s Guide To Survival.

The concept is that we will each write about our own cancer and that of each others’. We will each write from the vantage points of patient and care giver. I was the patient first and I never knew how hard it was being a care giver until it was my turn. Eileen has already started writing her view as a patient and I am not sure how I can match here poignancy and emotion. She gets right to the heart of the matter while I have a tendency to worry more about how I write rather than what I write.

Though we may differ in style and, at times, subject matter, I think we both will accomplish illustrating the importance of family and friends and health care providers who make you feel it is their life’s mission to make your day. I would never have imagined going into an oncologist’s office and being happy to see the people there. It is one of those blessings I mentioned earlier.

My guess is that if you are reading this you are a member of our team in some way. You have either supported Eileen and I directly or, perhaps, you have supported members of our family or one of our friends. You certainly have supported other cancer survivors. It’s a big club.

I love cliches. They’re so pithy and there’s nothing quite like pith when all is said and done. Some cliches sound like Yogiisms which may make us smile or groan but we, nevertheless, get the point of the statement which doesn’t always happen during Presidential debates.

The Jury’s still out. What a great cliche that is! It not only gets to the heart of the matter but instantly we have a mental image of a courtroom with an empty jury box and an anxious defendant and a courtroom full of people awaiting The Verdict. My mind actually creates the jury room in Twelve Angry Men. During the recent Obama-Romney debate I envisioned Henry Fonda urging me to not jump to conclusions, to examine the evidence, to be patient enough to allow the truth to will out.

It’s hard to ignore Henry when he is forceful. Even the cynical Jack Warden, with whom I can really sympathize because he is in a rush to go to a Yankee game, or Lee J. Cobb, the angriest of the Angry Men, cannot convince me that Obama is guilty of doing nothing for the last four years. It is because of this that, in my mind, The Jury Is Still Out. The trouble is Judgement Day is nigh.

My biggest disappointment with Obama is something Romney pointed out during the first debate. Instead of focusing on health care reform, Obama should have been doing more to create jobs and get the country back on its economic feet. I felt that if you get people back to work health insurance for these people would follow. I understood the situation, the historic alignment of Congress in the President’s favor. Obama had the votes to do something that hadn’t been done before and he chose to use this opportunity to create his legacy right out of the chute. Whether he was correct to do this cannot be determined yet. The Jury Is Still Out.

The trouble with undertakings as monumental as trying to fix health care is that these things take time. Obama’s attempting to deal with an issue that Presidents have been dodging for years. How often have we heard that Social Security is the third rail of politics? You touch it and you die. The same is true about Medicare and Medicaid. But it’s time that someone deal with them and Obama did just that and it may cost him re-election but maybe it shouldn’t?

Maybe we all have to come to the realization that important matters cannot be solved over night. Maybe we have to give these things some time? Maybe our ADHD inflicted society must just have a little patience and hope? Just maybe Obama was right. Maybe Obamacare will save Medicare and Medicaid and reform health care. The Jury may still be out but Henry Fonda has convinced me to be patient and to look at the evidence one more time. The Jury may be changing in favor of Obama.

I Believe

I believe in The New York Yankees, Champions of Heaven and Earth

I believe in Derek Jeter, our fallen son, The Clutch Hitter Almighty

I Believe in Mariano, Saver of All Time

I Believe In AROD, but I don’t know why.

I Believe in Cano, Doncha Know, who has been dead for Three Days but will Rise in The Motor City.

I Believe in Andy, who has Testified and been reborn.

I Believe in Granderson, the Grandy Man Can’t, who never saw a baseball he couldn’t swing at and miss.

I Believe in Swisher, the soon to be former Yankee, who Swishes when he hits and when he fails to catch.

I Believe, I really do Believe, The Tiger shall be tamed and the New York Yankees will remain Victorious for ever and ever.

Amen