“You can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” — American saying, author unknown

Part of aging is the physical breakdown of our bodies. I have tried to slow down the inevitable by working with a physical therapist weekly to strengthen my aching back and core (such as it is). Ironically, it was doing a new exercise (likely incorrectly) that left me with strained groin muscles and damage to the joint between my left and right pelvic bones that caused tremendous pain when I tried to initiate walking. After a visit to the pain doctor, an x-ray, and MRI, my doctor recommended lots of rest, pain management (translation, lots of pills), and using a walker. Finding a walker to borrow was easy. Most of my friends have one, as many people in my age group have had knee and/or hip replacements, broken bones from falls, or just need one to navigate the world.

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch tells Scout, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”  The walker was a real eye-opener. I was shocked to discover how hard it was to navigate my condo, let alone the outside world.

My condo itself is structurally fine. An elevator building. One floor living. Doors wide enough to accommodate a walker or wheelchair. A shower with a grab bar. So why couldn’t I get around easily? We had arranged our furniture based on aesthetics alone, not worrying if visitors, several of whom use wheelchairs, walkers, or canes, had enough space to move from one part of our home to another.

Once we moved things to clear paths wide enough room to maneuver, I made another shocking discovery. Our living room is basically open concept, but I realized I could only sit in one spot on the sofa. I couldn’t navigate the coffee table. Filled with shame about how insensitive our furniture arrangement was to our aging friends, several with with physical disabilities, we started to rethink how we could make our home truly accessible.

My first venture outside with the walker was going with my husband to the Civic Center to get a handicapped placard for the car. Armed with my doctor’s form, we found the handicapped entrance, a ramp leading into the basement. It is an old building, and all other entrances involved many stairs. Once in, I caught my walker on a series of mats placed down to catch the snow/rain. When we put down mats like these at the handicap-accessible preschool I directed, we used duct tape to hold them in place and replaced them when they started to curl. Not so at the Civic Center, where they were a huge trip hazard.

When I explained what we needed to the man stationed down a long hallway at the information desk, he pointed to the staircase to the second floor and informed us we needed to go to the City Clerk or City Collector. I guess he didn’t look up at me to see the walker. Luckily, we were near the one small elevator in the building. The City Clerk sent us across the hall to the City Collector. There was a line of people waiting, but no one offered to let me go ahead of them or even to sit on a chair. When I finally reached the head of the line, the Collector told me, “We don’t do that here,” and gave me some extension numbers for other departments I could call from the house phone down the hall. Of course, no one answered. Luckily for me, the woman at the closest desk, whose job was to issue building permits, redirected me to the City Clerk and advised me to make him read my paperwork and ask for a placard, not a sticker. Finally, we were on our way.

We thought we could go into Walgreens on our way home for one item, but the only handicapped spot was already taken so I waited in the car. Just another time I was left out. At a different Walgreens the next day, we snagged a handicapped space for our COVID boosters. When we finally emerged, here’s what we found:

Yes, someone had parked in the zone next to handicapped spots that supposedly affords someone who is disabled enough room to enter their car. Luckily, I was not alone and my husband could back the car out so I could get in.

I have also discovered that many “accessible” buildings do not have automatic door openers, or if they do, it’s only on the outer door. A trip to the audiologist’s office on the first floor of a newish building is a perfect example. Getting into the office was doable as the outer door had a button for handicapped access and the inner door pushed inward. Exiting was another matter. I could not pull the office door inward and was lucky a man in the waiting room saw my plight and helped me.

I have a friend with MS who has described the many times an Uber driver saw she was an older woman in a wheel chair and just kept going. Before she was using the wheel chair, when she came to our old house with her walker, she had to enter though the backyard alley and have people assist her up several stairs to enter the house. I had a small, first-floor powder room, which must have been challenging for her to use. I also had a few steps to go from the front hall to the rest of the first floor. Of course, all of the bedrooms and bathrooms were up a full flight of stairs. One of the reasons we moved was contemplating a future in which aging made it harder to manage all of those stairs. I don’t know how I would have handled this injury if we hadn’t moved, and I am racked with guilt over not seeing how hard it was for my friend to come over as her illness progressed.

As I wrap this up with my hands cramping from arthritis, I needs to share a final thought. No matter how empathic you think you are to others who are aging and/or have disabilities, it takes actually putting yourself in the same position as someone who has a handicapping condition to understand fully how challenging life can be. For those of us lucky enough to be temporarily restricted or not suffering from a permanent disability, incidents like mine are a preview of coming attractions.

“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” ― Walt Whitman

Good Neighbors – for David K 

Writing once about the passage of time, I urged you to seize the day.   (See Time and the Taxi Man)

I thought of those words recently at the funeral of our neighbor David K who had died suddenly the week before.  For decades my husband Danny and I shared the same East End Avenue address with David in a building that was small by Manhattan standards with only 16 floors and less than 200 apartments.   (See  (The Lion, The Witch, and) The Wardrobe ,  Moving Day Blues , A Sign on the Doorpost ,  Kente Cloth and The Elevator)

A happy consequence of living in a smaller building is that we’ve come to know a great many of our neighbors,  some of whom have become close friends.   We and David however,  had been relative strangers who nodded at each other in the elevator or in the lobby.

But hearing of his death we decided to go to the funeral.  There we learned much about David from friends and family who eulogized him.

He had been a physician as we knew,   but we learned he’d also been an internationally known medical researcher and teacher enormously respected by fellow scientists around the world.  Several came from abroad for the funeral and many others sent moving tributes.

David’s niece and nephew spoke of their uncle as the glue that held the family together,  and friends spoke about the memorable meals he cooked and dinner parties he hosted, trips they made together,  his keen intellect and wit,  and his love of art and music.

Leaving the funeral home,  Danny and i remembered the last time each of us had seen David.  I met him in the lobby one morning about a week earlier and we had stopped to chat.  By chance the conversation turned to politics,  our travel plans,  and movies we’d seen,  and as we parted I told him I had enjoyed our talk.  “Let’s not be strangers,”  I said,  “let’s make that dinner date!” 

David had been on his way to get his car,  and by chance in the garage he met Danny.  David said he’d just seen me in the lobby and we’d promised to make a dinner date.  “Yes, let’s do it soon.”  Danny told him as they parted.

But David died a week later and we never had that dinner date.  And regrettably,  we lost the chance for three strangers to become three friends.

RIP David.

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

This was the command from my mother when I was in elementary school. The assignment in class was to speak about our family background. The kids awkwardly told stories about the origins of their grandparents in Ohio or somewhere in California, and then moved to their home in North Hollywood. Their stories were antiseptic, hagiographic, and very American. I knew nothing about my ancestry nor about the lives of my parents. Obeying her command, I wrote a summary of the Kagans in the terms of Laura Engels Wilder.

Her prohibition affected me and my brother, Bob. His adherence to her instruction led him to never divulge the life of his parents. When I visited him for at the hospital he worked at, his staff asked me if my brother had a family: “He never tells us about his personal life.”  I told them to ask him themselves.

In short, both my brother and I were estranged from any sense of family values.

Only after my mother died leaving her autobiography did I learn of her history. Until then, Mother’s Day memories lay in the folds of an envelope addressed to Rose, my mother, and not much else.

After she died at the age of ninety-six, I read her 100-page handwritten autobiography. She recounted her childhood in the Russian held Ukraine which was threatened by pogroms, Germans, and Cossacks.

The Russians protected Jews from these enemies and the Communists offered them a better life than they had under the Czar.

Rose on the right, with husband Irving on the far left at the University of Judaism

I remember watching newsreels in our living room gloriously revealing Russian bombers taking off to targets in Germany. Only by reading her memoirs did I learn she was a communist.

A brilliant student, her curtailed her education, sent her off as a secretary. Ever since, she had felt squelched from a more creative life.

Rose did not want to marry or have children. After she married my father in Los Angles, she traveled back to Boston to make the announcement in the newspaper. And the picture was of her and her girlfriend.

During the anti-communist rage in America, my mother became frightened to reveal her background. She passed as an articulate woman who did not engage in Jewish activities or political action.

She wanted Bob and me to be doctors. He followed through. To her dismay I became a professor in Chinese studies. When I was awarded tenure with the title of full professor, she encouraged me to apply for medical school. Rose warned me to avoid using my title of Dr. because it would be confusing for the real thing.

Rose wrote in detail about her struggles with macular degeneration, financial losses from bad investment, loss of friends, and years in therapy. She did have some splendid experiences founding a Jewish theater in Fairfax, receiving recognition from the University of Judaism, traveling to Egypt, and working for the liberal Jewish Community Relations Center.

In her last 6 years, she had to move. Bob and Mickey, her stepson, though exceptionally rich with Bob living in a California mansion with a swimming pool, and with Mickey living in a European style villa in Hollywood refused to take care of her after she was twice robbed. My wife, Anna and I invited her to live in St. Paul.

She was glad to be safe in St. Paul but disliked Minnesotans, especially Jews. She often complained that she wishes she could still live with her Jewish friends in California.

Soon, her brain began to deteriorate–believing her nurses were stealing her toothpaste. Most revealing, she witnessed Cyrillic (Russian) writing on the walls. Rose died in her sleep.

I now have her urn in my study. I look at it often. I express my awe for her life’s encounters. I share with her my own history.

My Mother’s Day is not on a day or in a card.

Rose is with me in my study.

Breakfast in Bed

Many years ago we spent a spring weekend with friends at their beach house a few hours from the city.

That Sunday was Mother’s Day and our young son and our hosts’ two young kids had planned a lovely surprise.  Early that morning our bedroom door burst open and the three kids came in, our son balancing a large breakfast tray.

“Happy Mother’s Day!”,  the trio chanted as they approached our bed.

”How lovely!  Thank you!!”  I exclaimed.

But the words were hardly out of my mouth when to the horror of my son and his friends the too-heavy tray he carried toppled, and a sticky mess of juice, tea, toast, and  jam somersaulted onto the sheets.

And as is the wont of us mothers, I quickly turned from a feted celebrant to a consoler of children,  a drier of tears,  and a cleaner of spills.

And despite that minor mishap it was a lovely – and quite memorable –  Mother’s Day!

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

Early Session Commute

I like to stay up late at night and sleep late in the morning.  (See Night Owl)

But of course I couldn’t indulge those preferences during all my years working at a school,  especially the semesters I was on early session and had to punch a time clock at the ungodly hour of 7:40.

But then I had my morning routine down to a science – I’d set my alarm for 6:15 hit the snooze button until 6:30,  wash and dress by 7:00,  down a protein shake and get to my car by 7:20.   Then with my tea in a paper cup I’d drive to work during the infamous New York morning rush hour.  (See Going Back to Work)

But I live on Manhattan’s upper eastside and the school where I worked was in the Bronx,  and so if you know New York geography you know I’d be driving against the traffic.   I’d zip along in a  northbound lane while those poor souls heading south in rush hour traffic crawled along at a snail’s pace!

Not surprisingly I much preferred the semesters I was on late session and could get a little more sleep in the mornings.  But I must say on my early session commutes seeing the sun rise over the city was a rush hour treat!

– Dana Susan Lehrman

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