The winter solstice occurred this past Saturday.   The temperature rose to the high 60’s (close to 20 Celsius) in Manhattan.  The warm weather melted the ice in Central Park’s ponds and the layer of snow that had blanketed the grass and the paths the previous weekend.

I was sorry to see the snow and ice disappear.   After the snow had first fallen, there were still mallards, geese, and brants swimming on the 106 acre Jacqueline Onassis Reservoir in Central Park.  The reservoir, which is 40 feet deep, had not yet frozen.  However the ice was quite thick on the pond at the northeast corner of the park, which is named Harlem Meer.

I often walk around Harlem Meer twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, on my travels to and from Mt. Sinai Hospital.  On my walk around the pond in the evenings, looking to the south and west, the lights of the high-rise buildings in Manhattan sparkle as if they are holiday decorations. 

In addition, the park workers have built a small island of trees in the pond and decorated it with multi-colored Christmas lights.  It’s a beautiful time of year to be in Manhattan -- if you can handle the incredibly dense crowds of tourists and shoppers on the sidewalks.  Below is a photo that I took of the pond last week.  The scene is eerily beautiful.

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This past Saturday, I walked across Central Park from west to east along what had become a very muddy running track that encircles the Onassis Reservoir.  On the east side of the park, I met up with an old high school friend whom I had seen just once since graduating in 1965.  He had been a very good student and a very good athlete in high school.  At 66, he’s still very smart and very athletic, but seemed full of regrets at some of the blows life had landed on him.

Oddly, I am unhealthy and not nearly as smart as I once was, but I have few regrets.  Our meeting left me a bit unsettled, yet oddly grateful for my general outlook on life.  When my friend asked me how I was feeling, I gave him my well-rehearsed answer: “I have good days and bad days, and this is a good day. How are you?”

This past month a more honest answer to him and to other friends I have seen would have been “This is a difficult day.”  For regardless of whether I felt good or bad, it was a month of such intense myeloma-related days that I felt I was becoming a professional patient.

The last 30 days included 13 visits to the hospital, six of which were full-day visits; a bone marrow biopsy (the least painful I’ve ever had, but not such good results); a bone scan (a few lesions); nine infusions; innumerable shots and blood tests; 12 electrocardiograms; headaches and stomach distress; and one pneumonia diagnosis (the third bout this year).  Many bad days indeed!

Nevertheless, honest answers to the questions of how I feel are reserved for only my closest friends and relatives.  Life is too short to spend it discussing my aches and pains!  As Bette Davis is reputed to have said, “Old age ain’t no place for sissies.”

To help me pass the many hours in the hospital this month, I luckily found several great books to amuse or distract me.  The best one I found in my younger son’s bedroom.

The night before beginning the current round of treatments, while suffering from anxiety and insomnia, I decided to try sleeping on my younger son’s bed rather than continuing to toss and turn next to my wife.  I went into his room and pulled from the bookshelf Stranger in a Strange Land, a science fiction fantasy written by Robert Heinlein in 1961.

What a lucky find!  Somehow I didn’t read this book when I was growing up.  It is a perfect read for a teen­ager – a fantasy, but intelligent, provocative, with a little bit of titillating sex that would have been great for an adolescent.   When I mentioned the novel to my friends, many told me that they had read it and remembered it as a great read.   It’s very funny and has many great lines that are terrific for a person who is not in good health.

One of my favorite lines from Stranger in a Strange Land is about laughter. The central character, a human who was brought up by aliens and who didn’t know what laughter was, finally figures it out and comments:  “I’ve found out why people laugh.  They laugh because it hurts so much … because it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting.”

But perhaps my favorite discussion in the book was about two bronze sculptures cast by Auguste Rodin in the late 19^th century.   One of the sculptures is entitled “The Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone,” and the other is called “The Old Courtesan.”  Images of each of these are easily found on the Internet.

Heinlein writes in the novel about these sculptures of old, broken people:

"Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist – a master – and that is what Auguste Rodin was – can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is … and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be … and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body."

The statues are indeed shocking at first, particularly the one of the old courtesan. It does portray old age with all its wrinkles, flaws, and sags.  But yet, as Heinlein writes, if you look at the statue closely, it becomes more and more beautiful.  Not just for the implicit image of the pretty girl that the courtesan used to be, but also for the life spirit that the sculptor was able to capture that resides within her.

This month, as I cope with my own body’s deterioration, I found Heinlein’s description of the beauty within the old broken bodies wonderfully moving.

Perhaps each of us who is dealing with pain and aging can read this passage from Stranger in a Strange Land, look at the sculptures, and be empowered, as I was, to separate off a bit from the physical; to park the pain and the worry in a distant corner of the mind; and to take pleasure in the joyous things that can be found within us and around us at this dark but often joyous time of year.

Happy holidays and best wishes!