Coffee, Old Men and Fighting Depression

 

Bright, warm Saturday mornings are nothing short of a blessing. Me, on most Saturday mornings at 10 am I get together with some guys. Out on Duque de Avila about 40 of us gather at a padaria[1] for coffee drinks and Portuguese pastries. I like these folks.

Over espressos and galaos[2] we talk about anything and everything. Normally people talk about what they did before moving to Portugal. At most of these morning sessions probably half the table will talk about where they have just returned from or where they are traveling next. Others will talk about bureaucracy, for it is said there is no bureaucracy like the Portuguese bureaucracy. Obviously we talk about how troubled America seems to be. But we all try and keep it light and positive. 

Our coffees are always lively. Laughter punctuates the air as stories and jokes are shared. Jokes may not be the right word. Humorous stories or anecdotes from our lives are recounted. And we all have those WTF was he thinking tales. The scent of freshly baked pastries mingles with the rich aroma of coffee. Under the umbrellas out of the sun on a weekend day, it's a good place to be.

Our coffees provide a sense of community and belonging. I personally think these wide-ranging conversations provide a valuable support network for all involved. They allow us to share experiences, navigate the challenges of living abroad,and share who is the doctor to see for what and what hospital they work at. It is a time to celebrate our lives and the choices we have made. This includes the one we made when we moved to the Iberian peninsula. In many ways, Saturday mornings are a vital part of our social lives. We are friends.

One recent Saturday morning coffeetime conversation focused on the struggle between a desire to write and the interruptions that travel and social events had on one individual’s process. All the guys listened and made suggestions. However, it was clear that the writer’s frustration was not solved by this informal group therapy session. The writer was certain that only he could come up with his own viable solution.

Was this depression? I don’t think so. Listening to the tone and tenor of the conversation the speaker was simply feeling aggravation and frustration, cousins of depression, but not actual depression. I think he will eventually be able to figure out the balance he needs between his craft and his daily routine. But for another person this conversation might have been a statement showing the tip of the iceberg that is depression.

The world gets colder as we grow older, or so it seems. It is sad really. According to WebMD, 1/3rd of retirees suffer from depression. Another source, an NIH publication from 2022, pegs the number of retired individuals with depression at about 28%. So, depending on your source for information, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3rd of those people who have aged out and left the work force suffer various levels of depression.

It is clear to me and the doctors and researchers generating this data know that it isn’t simply separation from work that causes post-retirement depression. If only 30% of your heart is working, or if you are in stage III of some cancer, you got other things to be depressed about, existential things. Thinking hard about this I looked at a couple of sources talking about retirement and its correlation with depression. I grabbed a paragraph from an NIH article abstract and ran it through an AI grammar checker. This easily understandable statement got regurgitated.

Retirement almost always involves major changes in social roles and social networks. At the same time, changes are occurring to tangible assets like income and health insurance. These changes all impact the risk and management of depression. Addressing late-life depression is challenging. Often older adults with depression have co-occurring medical problems which complicate both the appropriate diagnosis and apt pharmacologic treatment.[3] 

Health care providers know strategies to fight depression in retirees. By reading something like an AARP tabloid paper or clicking on a newsfeed item with the keywords retiree health, you will see the list of action items. These strategies include engaging in regular physical activity, participating in social and community groups, and practicing mindfulness or cognitive-behavioral therapy. 

In most cases, a paragraph below the one containing the above suggestions will provide additional tips. Retired people are urged to develop hobbies and interests to provide purpose. The final lines in the article will reference establishing a consistent routine and maintaining strong social connections. This is because “experts” find these are critical components of supporting emotional well-being. 

One of the things we discussed on Saturday is the wall retirees hit when “the checklist” is done. Coming to Portugal we all had checklists. There were the basics, easy to state but challenging to accomplish like obtaining a visa to enter the country and then applying for a residency permit. To accomplish these, we all needed residential leases or purchased apartments. Then there were things like bus passes and medical cards. When you get a place you have to furnish it too. Yeah, all these things were on the checklists and kept us busy. Note that even if you remain at the place where you were upon retirement you most likely have a checklist. It usually involves updating the will, fixing the back porch roof, weeding what used to be the garden, etc. And yes that checklist will also come to completion.

A year may pass. Maybe it will take eighteen months. Completing the lists will probably not take more than two years. But there will always come a day when the checklists are ticked off. Then what? At that moment you face the massive wall of what’s next. At that point where you are headed and what you do next become acute questions.

I retired in January 2020 just before the world stopped and took a two-year breather. I spent two years like everyonetrying to stay alive. I ordered tons of supplies online. Got groceries delivered to my car trunk.  Took gallons of paint and redid my living room. Yup I had a I am stuck here in the middle of America checklist developed in the early months of the pandemic. But prior to retiring I created the “Let Us Move to Portugal” checklist. While 85% of what I did during the pandemic was stuff around the house, I kept plugging away at the Portugal checklist.

***

[Two days have passed.]

Going to be hot today.  According to my phone it will hit 85 F. Thing is I can handle a dry 85 but the humidity is way, way up there. In order to get my exercise in I decided to take a walk early. Covered 1 .3 miles at 3 mph and I got a little glow going. Yeah, yeah I hear the snickering out there. A half hour walk ain’t nothing I hear you thinking. True. But…I do it almost every day. And I do it several times a day. By day’s end I will have racked up five miles and 12,000 or more steps. And yes I know 10k steps is an absurd and irrelevant number.

In a few minutes I will hang the laundry out to dry.  When I came in from my walk the washing machine said there were13 minutes left to go. After that I will read a downloaded book on my iPad. Maybe later I'll watch a little TV, maybe binge a noir drama. No matter what, I will write. Oh yeah I will purge my email. Over the years I have accumulated way too many people who want my money. They all write to me for their causes almost every day.

Truth be told I struggled with how to end this piece. Although my checklist was done some while ago I am not depressed. Existential angst I have by the boatload, but depression I don't have.  I can lay awake at night wondering if anything I have done has meaning and for that matter whether humanity and life itself have meaning. But in the morning I wake up looking forward to brewing coffee, taking a walk, writing, trying to come up with a trip somewhere that doesn’t break the bank. And then I get to say mean things on Facebook and watch the turmoil brewing over the election. And then I can check my news feed and be repulsed by all the shit going on in the world. And then I write to people and we talk about kids and life hacks and memories.

These things are enough for me.  They keep darkness at bay. I am sorry that a large number of my fellow retirees are suffering. I really don’t know what will improve their lot but as long as I can walk, read and type I think the monster will stay away. If it gets really bad for me there is always macrame. Oh yeah my wife is somewhere painting rocks today. 

 

 

---

[1]  A business where pastries, cookies and coffee drinks are produced and sold. There is often outside seating available at tables all under broad umbrellas.

[2] A hot drink from Portugal made by adding foamed milk to espresso coffee. Similar to caffè latte or café au lait, it consists of one quarter coffee and three quarters foamed milk. It is served in a tall glass.

[3] Dang L, Ananthasubramaniam A, Mezuk B. Spotlight on the Challenges of Depression following Retirement and Opportunities for Interventions. Clin Interv Aging. 2022 Jul 7;17:1037-1056. doi: 10.2147/CIA.S336301. PMID: 35855744; PMCID: PMC9288177.

 

 

 

So Many Thanks to Give But I Will Start Off with Really Just One

Sometimes there are moments of grace in this world. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes the stars align. I have had my share of the better things in life. Shamefully I have not celebrated the events or the people who made them happen enough.

Maybe I will someday write up a list of people to thank for the good they have brought into my life. From my mother who urged me to always try and achieve the most I could academically to my father who insisted I live by time tested principles of honor and integrity various people gave me gifts some tangible and some intangible. I owe both my late parents many thanks. Also, I owe my wife thanks for giving me great kids, incredible support when things got rough, and three-square meals a day for almost forty years. Oh yeah, and I owe her thanks because she loves me.

I mean there are odd people like John Dorsey who introduced me to jazz, one of my musical passions.  From the Mahavishnu Orchestra to Miles Davis those late nights sitting around Butterfield Hall listening to jazz changed how my brain worked. In the vein of thanks owed it would be impossible not to mention one of my former girlfriends who shamed me into being much, much neater. My old roommate Nate actually called me out when I stopped throwing my dirty clothing into a pile in the corner of our room and started using a laundry basket. Thank you, you know who you are.

There are three doctors I owe my deepest thanks to. These are first Anthony Meier. M.D., second the gent at LIU whose name I cannot spell, and finally Dr. Sam Kaffenberger at U of M Taubman. Tony Meier found evidence of prostate cancer in me way before it normally comes to light. He handed me over to the guy at the Lansing Institute of Urology who DaVinci machined my ass and rendered me prostate cancer free for a full 18 years after diagnosis. The same LIU doctor when I had a slight bladder irritation sent me for a CT scan and found a small tumor in my left kidney. He sent me for a biopsy and viola it was renal cancer.

Because the doctor at LIU was about to retire, I decided to travel to the University of Michigan for treatment. I asked one of the ladies who know in East Lansing (a subset of the ladies who lunch) who was the pro from Dover for renal cancer at U of M. I got a referral to him but his staff bounced me to another guy. Seems my tumor was too small for him to work on. The second one bounced me for the same damn reason. My tumor was too small for his standards. He sent me to the next guy, the new guy. I checked the new guy out and with a path running through Sloan Kettering I decided to trust Dr. Kaffenberger with my life.

From the get go Dr. Kaffenberger was compassionate, understanding and very, very real. He made me feel confident in my choice to let him do the cutting on me. Losing a fifth of my left kidney hurt but the care and follow up I got from this fine doctor gave me hope.

Today after five years of annual visits my annual conversations with this good doctor about life in Portugal and raising challenging children have ended.  Five years out the tables and charts say I have less than a 1 % chance kidney cancer will recur. So, the insurance company will no longer pay for that once a year drugged up MRI and the following ½ hour chat between me and the good doctor. We said goodbye today, a good goodbye and the doc said if I needed anything medical, fire him off an email and he would match me up with the best out there. I believe him

I celebrate you Dr. Kaffenberger and your team at U of M.

 

May You Be Born In Interesting Times, or….

 

My Level of Anxiety

23 July 2024

May you live in interesting times. I don’t know which is the correct phrasing. Both have appeared in fortune cookies over the years. Supposedly the saying comes from an ancient Chinese proverb. Unfortunately, I do not know the phrase’s provenance and am unsure about the philosophical or experiential underpinning of the maxim.

For all I know the folksy bon mot was made up by some eastern European immigrant while working in a bakery in Passaic. Maybe he crafted it while working in a place supplying restaurants in New York’s Chinatown with specialty treats. According to the fortune cookie wiki (and we all trust wikis, right?) “They most likely originated from cookies made by Japanese immigrants to the United States in the late 19th or early 20th century. The Japanese version did not have the Chinese lucky numbers and were eaten with tea.”

Origins aside the key words about when one should exist that being “interesting times” seem to have some salience for me regarding the past several weeks. I mean a botched debate, an assassination attempt, and a sitting President dropping out of his run for reelection are all momentous events that took place together to produce an "interesting time" in the world.  I mean this is the macro level of interesting times for me.

For me, there is also a micro level of "interesting times". During my visit to the US, I watched the aforementioned political drama with my young adult children. These young men are shaking their heads at what they perceive are the wrong directions America is taking again and again. But my interesting times also include a fiftieth high school reunion (damn I got old), medical visits, taking care of the old family home, shopping for various odds and ends to bring back to Europe and then enduring the circle of Dante’s Inferno that is modern air travel.

Having watched six days of nonstop political ads running in Pennsylvania back in June, seen Trump’s RNC show, and then observing Biden falling out of the race for the presidency, I can say I am more afraid of the prospects for our democracy than I was during the Watergate scandal last months. And I was scarred shitless then. Interesting times/strange days indeed.

I have to tell you hearing things like this comment from people like Ohio state Sen. George Lang, a Republican representing the West Chester district at a rally featuring the Republican’s VP nominee that if Republicans don’t win it in the fall that a civil war could be necessary to save the country is deeply frightening. Now mind you Lang has apparently been taken to the woodshed by the national Republican party. He now deeply regrets his “divisive remarks” and understands he must be more circumspect in his language going forward. But he is not alone in these kinds of remarks. It strikes me as similar to an experienced lawyer asking a highly prejudicial question during a trial only to “respectfully withdraw” the question when the judge and opposing counsel rage. Once the comment has reached the jury’s ears any instruction to disregard the question is pointless since the seed has been planted.

I am not afraid for myself. I have had a good life.  Hell, I just showed up to my 50th reunion with my aching knees and all. Also, I don’t live in America anymore so the threat to my personal integrity should things turn sideways during this election is greatly diminished. But I am worried for democracy when such language and ideas as offered by Mr. Lang above permeate election races and bubble just below what is openly said. I am afraid for my children. My boys live in a diminished world. But now they have to fear potential neighbor-on-neighbor violence when this election draws near. Unlike in previously highly disputed elections that potential is not null but actually has a value that is a whole number. We live in frightening times.

 

Looking at Old Photos

On the back was scrawled "Janice, 1979? Where?"

With a faded pale blue cover this photo album clearly was an old K Mart special. It was one of those with pages consisting of a cellophane cover sheet that sat atop the photos. The cellophane would make a slorpping sound if you pulled it back to remove a photo. Each page had thin lines of adhesive goop that held onto the backs of the pictures . Over the years, the adhesive had yellowed and lost grip.  As a result, as he turned the pages, pictures became dislodged and fell  out. 

 

He stared at one stray picture that had fallen out of that aged cheap photo album into his lap. An old black and white taken by probably an old Nikon 35mm. The image was captured on a clear day. That afternoon must have been cool for she wore that bulky seaman's sweater that she loved. The shot was taken looking north and west toward open water on the rocky Oregon coast. Or maybe it was Washington. Or maybe it was BC. Forty years passed so quickly.

 

She was standing barefoot on the beach her right arm holding her shoes. Her back was to the camera. Her head was turned so the features of her face were visible in the clear crisp light of that day. Her brunette hair blew in the breeze and she smiled that smile she gave when she was happy, when she was delighted. After a long trip across the plains, she clearly enjoyed her reward, bare feet on wet sand looking out at the mighty Pacific. 

 

Her expression and body language conveyed pure joy and contentment. It was as if all her worries and troubles had melted away, leaving only bliss in the moment the camera had captured. Seeing her like this stirred up a mix of emotions in him - nostalgia, sadness and maybe a longing to reconnect with her if just for a few moments

 

So many questions. Why didn’t he remember taking this shot? Why was this shot in an album containing pictures of his family curated by his late mother? He didn’t think he had given his mother any of their pictures. What had he done wrong that separated them for so many years? Finally, where was she now? Was she living or dead? Did she ever think of him? Did her memories return to that trip? 

 

With his forefinger and thumb, he held the picture close to his eyes. He wanted to see if he could see anything along the beach that might yield a clue as to where they had been when he took the shot. A couple of rock outcroppings were visible but nothing that screamed you were at Table Rock in Bandon, Oregon, or on Rialto Beach near Forks up in Washington. It had to have been taken soon after they hit the coast. This had to have been at a spot near the Washington/Oregon border where the Columbia River empties into the ocean. He smiled as he remembered staying with her in that mom-and-pop motel under the bridge in Astoria. After the long road trip it had been so nice to sleep in a comfortable bed. So many questions.

 

He tucked the picture inside the deep interior pocket of his jacket. There was no reason the picture should be in the album with pictures of Uncles Jack and Fred. God rest their souls. He was taking the picture. No doubt he paid for the picture to be processed. He had paid for gas and the car for the trip. There's no question, at least in his mind, that the photo belonged to him forever and ever.

 

He promised himself that later when he got home he would take out his Sam’s Club atlas and try and trace the route they took to the left coast. Maybe with a map in front of him he could figure out where the photo was taken.  He also promised himself a few minutes with a search engine to see if she was still alive. He started whistling Bob Seger’s night moves and then flipped to another page in that old book of images.

Savor Sunday

A lightly overcast late May morning easily distracts one from weighty thoughts. I am so glad. Instead of thinking about life’s brevity and the meaning of it all, I am simply concerned with where on this slow Sunday morning can I get some pancakes? Instead of dwelling on Hegel and Heidegger, I am concentrating on fried batter cakes.

The Baptist choir from across the courtyard sings How Great Thou Art in Portuguese. Their voices flat and sharp, on key and off, blend together and filter through the echo chamber of the courtyard becoming transcendingly beautiful. As I look towards the church my mind ponders great mysteries like do I need syrup or will fruit and crème fraiche do?

Within four blocks of my apartment are five brunch places. You can choose between red velvet pancakes topped with ice cream or toast with lox and cream cheese. You can opt for a good coffee and a pastry if you so desire. Me, I am focused on pancakes. When I suggest to my mate we have breakfast out there is no argument at all, none, not even a sigh.

Off we go and head down the hill. It is a funny thing really; all of the breakfast places are down the hill on a zig-zag route from my dwelling. We look at the first place and the prices shock the conscience, well at least my conscience. We pass the place with the Scandinavian name but it and its menu don't catch my attention today. Don't get me wrong it is an excellent place and we have eaten there before and will again, only not today. We walk on by and we walk on down.

The street becomes crowded with trees and old buildings. We look into a couple of places but uh …um…I am not sure. Finally, we stop at a café with outdoor seating and check the menu using our smart phones and QR codes. Remnants of the pandemic will last for years, if not always. And when I see the duck waffles I know we will eat here.

I will not get the duck waffles but my wife will. And they have a fruit covered waffle with coffee flavored whipped cream to top it off. Hell, what is a waffle anyway except a dimpled pancake, right? In a space near a major road but in a quiet location hidden around the corner, this place is inviting. Canopied by the bright green leaves of so many trees I find a bit of Sunday morning joy. My fork cuts through the waffle's brown crispness, spears a blackberry and drags some coffee-flavored whipped cream toward my mouth.

A quiet space on a not too warm, not too cool morning sitting at an outdoor café, is pretty damn close to heaven. In a world that often feels chaotic and overwhelming, finding joy in simple moments like sitting at an outdoor café on a quiet Sunday morning can be a reminder of the beauty that exists in the everyday. Here in this place, I momentarily detach from my worries and savor the flavors of fried dough and ripe fruit.

  

PGHS Class of 1974 Farewell Tour

 

From the Cambridge Online Dictionary:

farewell

noun [ C ]   formal

US  /ˌferˈwel/ UK  /ˌfeəˈwel/

 

An occasion when someone says goodbye.

 

tour

noun

US  /tʊr/ UK  /tʊər/

 

A planned visit to several places in a country or area made for a special purpose, such as one made by a politician, sports team, or group of performers.

Just the other day I was reading my newsfeed and came upon an article where Vince Gill talked about the joy of being in the Eagles. (I probably shouldn’t have used “the” but so it goes    https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-band-band-name-eagles/). Gill was asked to ruminate on this being the Eagles' Farewell tour. Really I don’t remember his answer but it got me to thinking about how many bands that were major parts of the soundtrack of my teens and twenties were doing, or had finished, Farewell tours in the last year or two, Elton John, Dead and Company, and numerous more.  (Here is a link to a list of who farewelled it in 2023 https://ultimateclassicrock.com/farewell-tour-tracker/). (Here is a link to who is farewelling in 2024 https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/music/info-2024/final-live-band-tours.html). 

It is not that difficult to understand why these bands are calling it quits. Clearly, the band members are old and time has taken its toll. I saw Gordon Lightfoot a few years before he died and his voice was shot. Same for Dylan when I saw him a couple of years ago. There comes a point where your voice sounds terrible even in a lower register and backup singers can only help so much. About the only singer from that era who held onto his voice is Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music. I am 68 and so most of the band members of my era are in their mid to late 70s. Bodies wear out. And the question of whether it is still the band when only the drummer and bass player remain from the original quintet looms large.

In less than a month I will be at my 50th high school reunion. Hmm? “A planned visit … made for a special purpose” matched up with “An occasion when someone says goodbye”. What are the chances I will see more than a handful of people from the upcoming event again?  Pretty darn low if you ask me. So, seeing them in the banquet hall is really an occasion where, even if we don’t speak the words aloud, we will say goodbye. Yup, I guess I am going on a farewell tour. Odds are slim, although not nonexistent, that I will ever return to Jersey. My guess is that for many people this is also their farewell tour of New Jersey, or at least of Penns Grove.

My thought is that it will be all of our greatest hits that get played. Stories will come out about well-known events, public nudity for some of us, and less well-known events. Confessions will be made and secrets revealed. We will all have to confess who we were with at Bridget’s party and talk about the madness we saw there. Hopefully all the ancient grievances will be forgotten or at least apologies will be offered and amends will be made. Kind acts will be honored. 

It saddens me that a number of the members of the band, in other words, the class of 1974, won’t be present because they are no longer with us. But we can still make joyous, audacious and loud noises just like the E. Street Band without Danny Federici and Clarence the Big Man. We will remember the missing and talk about the solos they took over the years. Yeah, it’s a farewell tour and as such it is bittersweet.  Don’t get me wrong I am looking forward to this just as much as I would be if I had a ticket to the current Bruce Springsteen world tour, or the Eagles last stand. Hopefully we will put on one last great show before we depart into that good night.

 

 

Why I Write

When I was in high school they tried to teach me how to write. They failed. 

My 9th grade began in September 1970. Americans had just experienced a decade of change, radical change. Teachers were facing demands that the content in classes be current, relevant, and less rigid. So, while they still taught Silas Mariner they also taught Kurt Vonnegut and Jack Kerouac. Run on sentences abounded. Cartoon blobs served as punctuation marks. Contemporary literature in the 1970s was a very confusing genre.

I remember a few lessons about writing a paragraph. You know it should coalesce around one idea, have and opening sentence that gave the focus of what would follow and a summation sentence. Vague memories persist of a day of one teacher drawing lines on the chalkboard trying to show us how to diagram a sentence. For me it didn’t sink in. Comparedto reading Cat’s Cradle or On the Road learning grammar was dull. And also, I was stoned. One's ability to comprehend structured intellectual concepts when stoned is compromised. But now and then some content seeps in.

But I come from a family with a long history of oral story telling. You know, maybe the better term is confabulating. If you have seen Tim Burton's Big Fish you have seen the kind of narrative I heard growing up. There were stories about bears peering into cabin windows and people taking lightning hits and living. I was always afraid of lightning. When I gotnervous my grandmother would show me a scar on her arm from surviving a lightning strike and tell me not to be afraid.

As I grew up I gathered my own tales of drunken canoe rides, of luging in Norway, and of having the most wonderful time driving through the Rockies. There are stories of sitting on stage for a Muddy Waters show and in front of the stage at an early Bruce Springsteen show. How did that happen? Well it was just because of the shirt I was wearing. I mean how great is it that I can honestly tell you of my personally insulting Tim Burton?

When I began to work for the state of Michigan in 2000 I took my breaks at a coffee shop. As one does over coffee I would talk to the baristas and the other patrons and we would swap stories. One of my friends repeatedly told me to write these tales down. Finally, I listened to her.

With poor spelling, atrocious grammar and words too big for my own good I started a blog. Over the years I have kept writing. Sometimes I step back and edit older stuff because with the new AI powered grammar checking I can make some tales more readable. But I am still creating new stuff because I am constantly having adventures and fun. Once I started down the storytelling path I couldn’t stop.

Oh yeah and my writing hero is, drum roll please, Jean Shepherd. I think the tale about his old man riding the salt and pepper shaker at the county fair is one of the classics of American short story literature. You can have little Ralphie from A Christmas Story. Tell me the story of drunken guys trying (and failing miserably) to assemble a Sear’s house any day.

As long as my brain works, I will keep typing stories about my recent and past experiences. We humans have a traditionof sitting around campfires and telling long tales intended to entertain and impart wisdom. So my plan is to throw another log on the fire as I sit by Gitchegumme and wave my arms about in the firelight talking of life's hilarious and heartfelt moments.

A note about the following video.  As I was working up this post I decided I needed a song that involved writing.  First thing that came to my mind was Richard Thompson's Tear Stained Letter. I simply typed in the title and came up with all sorts of folks singing songs called Tear Stained Letter. As one might guess there are several distinct and different songs by that title.  When I came upon this one I never knew Jo El Sonnier had ever covered Richard Thompson's song let alone made a music video for it.  The video is so weird it is hilarious. It has been a minute since I watched anything with Judge Reinhold in it.