Up To Speed

In an effort to thank everyone and to clarify what's been going on within my much-improved life as of late, it's almost easier to spell it out here than it is to go down the list, one by one, in order to bring everyone up to date...

My father's doing very well -- he's been in NJ so I haven't seen him nearly as much as when he was recuperating in Lenox Hill's ICU, and not seeing him has left me feeling a bit detached. We speak at least once a day on the phone, and usually our conversations are more frequent, somewhere in the 2-3 a day neighborhood, but even then it's still not quite the same. Healthwise he's making good strides and we're hoping he's back to work sometime, at this point, in February. His mind is as sharp as it ever was, if not moreso, so once his body catches up -- which should be soon -- we'll all breathe a final sigh of relief and move forward.

In other "trifecta" fronts, the "family unit" has been on a much more even keel as of late; we're accepting and handling the numerous challenges life has thrown at us in a much more relaxed way, and we're thankful, both individually and as a group, that we haven't been polarized by all that's transpired. Much like a layer cake, if the ingredients are lousy, the cake doesn't have much chance. And while we don't discuss much of the "dark days" that preceded all this, all of us -- myself included -- are beyond relieved that we're past that and that we'll be back to smiling with regularity.

As for the final third of the trifecta, I am amazed at how much I smile these days. Well before all of this happened, and even during the months leading up to it, I would consider myself a person who, for the most part, was happy with his life; and despite trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, I resisted the urge to employ common sense and just continued at it. But as the months passed I realized that, rather than missing where and with whom I'd been, what occurred to me was that I missed being happy, content and in the right place. I probably would have come to this conclusion slowly and eventually, but that realization came quickly and effortlessly, largely because I found someone that makes me laugh, understands me and understands life. Something that occurred to me is that if things need to be spelled out, scheduled, shoe-horned and constantly bargained over, I'm in the wrong place. Unfortunately, being in the wrong place didn't provide this epiphany; being in the right place did. So in hindsight, my relief over being free of that agony, misery and aggravation is almost as great as my father's continuing progress.

The one thing I've noticed over the past months is the notion of family, security and serenity. Without getting too philosophical, I've realized how close I am to my family and how that's actually a good thing. We've "celebrated" holidays, but until my father is 100% and smiling and we're all looking at these past months as being fully in the past, "celebrating" is a daily occurrence, only in much more minimal terms. I still maintain that whether it's Chanukkah, Thanksgiving or even New Year's Eve, the blow-out celebrations are muted until further notice. For now, I'm content with celebrating the knowledge that my father and my family are well, my life is back in the right direction and waking up smiling and looking forward to the coming day, rather than regretting yesterday. It's a strange phenomenon, optimism; I lost it for awhile, and now that it's back in my life I can't understand or imagine how I lasted as long as I did without it. I suppose I'm just thankful that I've reached this point and, for the first time in longer than I care to admit, I'm content with life and where mine is going, with whom, and why. That, and my dad's impending recovery, makes me happier than I could ever hope to express, with words or otherwise. So when my friends and remote family members check in with me to ask how my Thanksgiving was, these days I am apt to tell them, without hesitation, sarcasm or forethought, that I'm living it every day.