I’m Normal

 

From all outward appearances, I appear normal - whatever that means these days.  I wear clothes that might be expected of a 67 year old - nothing too flamboyant or fancy and nothing to cheap or shabby.  I still shave regularly.  Not a lot of flash to my life.  In most settings I tend to blend in and that’s just fine with me.  I exercise a lot … hiking and mountain biking on trails near my Marin County home.  I’m pretty quiet and a good listener, largely because I’m mastered the art of emptying my mind.  Almost anything anybody says will find a welcome in my mind, because what’s already there is often lonely.  But only the sturdy stuff survives in my mind for long.  I clean my mind regularly.  I  take out the garbage in there twice a day through meditation in my secret spots up on the mountain. 

 

I’m the son of a Wall Street Banker who felt that banking was a normal thing to do. Bankers didn’t make the obscene salaries they do today.  Banking, back then, was an honorable profession where people who desired little more than economic security worked for their entire career.  After 40 years at the same bank my father retired. They gave him a gold watch and a complementary physical exam that revealed cancer.

 

In our three story white house, we lived a normal suburban life in a normal suburban town.  We celebrated birthdays for all seven of us in that bursting household.  We made a big deal of Christmas.  We had trips and games and squabbles.  We were normal people in a normal community in normal times.  Oh my God how things have changed.

 

Most of the lawns in our town were well manicured and I helped keep them that way. I used to cut our lawn and lawns all around our town, to earn spending money in college.  I studied hard, played sports and got good grades.  Most of my classmates liked me and voted me both Class President and Most Likely to Succeed.  But I fooled them when I took it upon myself to unilaterally revise the definition of success.