Now Fifty is Young
When my son was 12 and I was 50 we went to Guatemala for a month in the summer. Peter was working, and we went on our own. It was one of those wonderful and unexpected trips with many long bus rides to unexpected destinations: small villages where we stayed in huts, places around Lake Atitlan where we lived with families. We were both in awe. That summer was my fiftieth birthday. I couldn’t say it out loud, even to myself. Fifty seemed like an impossibly large number, and I couldn’t entirely fathom what it meant.
I thought about that trip when I was at the dermatologists office recently. I was there because I’d looked in the mirror to put my earrings on and noticed my right piercing was split in two. My ears had been pierced since I was 10 years old, and don’t remember a day since then when I didn’t wear earrings.
Tearing an earlobe is minor in the universe of all our physical calamaties now. Still I wanted to fix it and wasn’t sure how. An online site called Nextdoor is often a good source for information, so I posted my earlobe story there. Although a torn earlobe can happen in several different ways, it’s a common sign of aging. Like other body parts, it just gives out.
Many people responded and told their torn lobe stories. I called the first three recommended doctors. One wanted a $500 consultation fee just to look at my ear and give his advice. One was busy for three months. The third could see me in a week so that’s where I went.
What’s funny now is that I often check doctor reviews online, as though they were equivalent to restaurants. There’s a Yelp site for dermatologists. And another site I use often called Zocdoc. This doctor seemed fine. A plus for me was that he shared an office with his dermatologist daughter. She probably would’t have gone into his field if he didn’t like his work.
The office, on 39th and Park, was entirely characterless. Bowls of free samples of skin creams, hypoallergenic samples of Tide, and generic pictures on the wall. Trees. A boat. Coincidentally across the hall from my old acupuncturist Dr. Ming.
Two women receptionists sat behind the reception window. They were pleasant which is enough. The doctor came out and introduced himself. He looked like someone I went to college with – generally familiar. Usually now, when I meet a new doctor, I ask if they’ve read Atul Gawande’s On Being Mortal, my favorite book on aging. He didn’t especially seem like the Gawande type so I asked what he liked to read. “My two favorite authors,” he said, “are Edith Wharton and Chekov. But I’m open to suggestions.” I mentioned Elizabeth Strout. He wrote down her name.
Then I lay down on his table and he fixed my earlobe. It was numb, and I felt absolutely nothing. He was an amiable conversationalist – some politics (he’s not a Trumper) some movies (he liked Perfect Days, my favorite 2024 movie), some family history.
When he was finished, I asked him about Botox. I don’t want it, but I was curious what he had to say. “You have the forehead of a fifty year old,” he said and we both laughed. “If you do want a procedure, you might try the Ruby Laser for your brown spots. It’s only fifteen minutes.”
He gave me a prescription, in case.
Happy all holidays
Love from Alte.
In 2020 and 2021, when I was 62, I lived for 10 months in El Salvador. My late wife Betsy Cohen, an attorney and fluent in Spanish, had a Fulbright scholarship to teach at a University in San Salvador, and we went there with our younger son. In December of 2020 our two older children joined us and we went to various places, including the Mayan site of Tikal in Guatemala. On December 21, 2020, our daughter’s 21st birthday, we rose before dawn and climbed the wooden stairs to the top of Temple IV at Tikal. I wrote the following poem later:
A sonnet for Cecily
Before sunrise, that is to say, when earth
was still unformed, before any first rhyme
began, I sat on steps of stone—the birth
of all was waiting in this pregnant time—
scented jungle, howler monkeys, screaming
to greet the dawn, demanding with the force
of what their voices could create—dreaming
of Mayan ghosts whispering with sweet, coarse
voices of cool winds blowing through the comb
of Temple IV. Cecily, next to me,
was there to start the world—as seeds in loam
begin to grow and live—and there was she,
my symbol for the coming of the sun,
one note of earth’s perfection just begun.
It was a joyous and oddly Jewish moment for me. Many other adventures in El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras remain with me, along with the two weeks I spent earlier in Nicaragua, with a Jewish contingent of a group visiting there as part of a Witness for Peace trip.
Esther Cohen’s piece makes me remember this vividly. Among other places we visited was Lake Atitlán and the memories are vivid still.
Thanks, Esther, for this comment.
I'd love to know how he fixed your earlobe. I've had pierced lobes since 1961 at age 16 and believe it or not, pierced ears (except maybe for my mom, who's from Austria and my Hispanic neighbors), pierced ears were not common back then. .