Has what has turned into a monthly Zoom call with some friends from college yesterday. It was kind of rough. Tony's dad Fulton had just passed away, in a particularly sad manner given where we are as a nation and planet right now. Eric was in New York trying to pack up the apartment on West End where his family has lived since, if memory serves correctly, 1962. His mom's physical condition has gone downhill and he needs to find a place for her to live out her days. He was particularly bumming because he thinks it may be July before he can get back to Rome where his wife is because they are seeing a 3rd or 4th (I lose count) of COVID as the British variant has taken root and they've struggled to roll out the vaccine. Maria has made the tough call to move her son, who has been living out in back of their house in northern Vermont and never coming out, to someplace in Texas where he can get some help. For my own part, I've been stressing out about Corinna's cancer up in New York and also Kelvin out in California. Also my cousin Neva's husband Tim out in Little Washington.
Meanwhile, nobody's kids are getting married. It is entirely normal for people to get old and die. It happens, and it probably beats the alternative. But for my peers right now it is not being adequately offset by a couple of other sets of events: weddings and births. We ourselves got married late by historical norms and then had kids late. There's plenty of data on this topic. So it's only natural and expected that we will have to wait longer for our kids to get married and have kids.
But it sucks when people are dying. It was very nice yesterday when Eric was able to reframe things momentarily in terms of his daughter Emily, who had spent a fair amount of the pandemic with him and Anna outside of Rome, is back and setting up a household with her boyfriend up on 191st St.
We are at least fortunate that we know more about health so we can manage our aging processes a little bit better than prior generations. For example, tennis! Z and I were out on the court yesterday evening and I had a good day. I had done some backsliding in recent weeks and he had been winning probably seven sets out of ten, something like that, but yesterday I slowed it down and played a more disciplined game, went for fewer winners, took speed off my first serve to get it in (and therefore had fewer double faults), and focused on helping him make mistakes. I took the first set 6-3 and was up in the second before he had to retire because, it turned out, the repetitive strain of a year of intense tennis has hurt his wittle awm and his wittle weg.
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