Now that the circle of people who ignore emails has grown wider than ever – starting with editors and extending all the way to friends – I’m trying to limit the times I check my inbox so to minimize the inevitable disappointment. Over the weekend, I went to my phone on waking up and then not again till 5 pm. Yesterday was more difficult, as part of my workday is spent writing emails that will never be answered.
Saturday Hania and I drove to Sawgrass Mills, where – as always – I found a bench in the shade while she went around the shops. I had my paperback copy of Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem and the Review section of the weekend’s Wall Street Journal to keep me company.
As I sat there reading a review of Mary Beard’s new book Emperor of Rome it occurred to me what an anachronism I was. It seemed to me that I was the perfect subject for some young person’s candid street – or in this case, mall – photography.
About 10 minutes later a middle-aged man appeared, stopped, and looked at me in amused amazement. “A man reading a newspaper!” he exclaimed with delight. “Somebody ought to take a picture!”
After my cleaning yesterday I picked up a Reese’s peanut butter cup from the stash of Halloween candy on the receptionist's counter.
Yesterday evening in Delray Beach I was in a restaurant, waiting to use the men’s room, when I noticed that the man in front of me was wearing a cap with writing in Hebrew on it. I asked him what it said.
“Guess,” he said.
“Israel,” I said.
Apparently I was way off. He went through the letters phonetically, but I still had no clue. Then he enlightened me:
“Yankees,” he said.
Yesterday, Hania and I drove down to our lawyer’s office in Coral Gables and signed our wills. It was one of those rites of passage moments – like graduating from college or getting married – but without the celebratory aspect. At one point three secretaries walked in to witness the signing, and then signed the copies themselves, and when all the papers had been gathered there were no hearty congratulations. The sense of relief – surely not accomplishment – I felt that we had finally done the deed was accompanied by a sense of doom.
Driving home on I-95, I thought: Now if we die in a car crash people will say, “Well, they signed their wills just in time.”
I have always liked my dentist. The first time I went to see him, in 1990, he looked in my mouth and declared: “There’s a lot of work I could do in there but until something starts bothering you we’ll just leave it alone.” My affection for him grew even stronger this week when Hania received a reminder from him to make an appointment. It was printed like an old Florida postcard, “Greetings from your DENTIST” it read, with the letters of the last word filled with tropical scenes. Underneath, instead of “Wish you were here,” were the words “Hope you can make it…”