The Present. The Past. The Prozac?

“What the heck is that?” my husband Bob asked, as I put four eggs in a metal basket, then placed them in the small round porcelain appliance.

“It’s a Hankscraft egg cooker,” I said. “It was my mother’s. I think it’s from the fifties.” I put in a little water before placing the top on and plugging it in. After it started to steam, I got very excited. “When the steam stops, the eggs are soft boiled!”

The steam stopped. I carefully removed the eggs from the basket and sliced into one. It was raw. “They must have had a lot of salmonella in the fifties,” Bob said, and proceeded to take the remaining three eggs and put them in the microwave. After a minute he took them out and sliced into one. Do not EVER do this!

In a comedy of terrors, egg confetti exploded onto the ceiling, the floor and all over my eyeglasses. Fortunately, the cat flew out of the room in time.

“At some point,” Bob said, while picking yellow and white egg bits out of my hair, “you might want to consider getting over this ‘living in the past’ problem of yours.”

I’m turning fifty this year, and I’ve developed this nostalgic need to appreciate the past. I know what this is about. I want to stop time. But failing that, I want to bring the past into my present, not just to keep the past alive, but to have a sense of continuity for things that are a part of my generation that will live beyond me. It does continue meaningfully, doesn’t it?

We cleaned up the egg splatters. It took three hours. Afterwards, I slowly sat down on the couch, holding my lower back due to imaginary back pain.

“You’re talking yourself in to this funk,” Bob said. “You’ve  never looked so good. Fifty doesn’t necessarily mean you’re at death’s door.”

“Believe me, Bob. Time’s going fast.” I pinched the skin together on the back of my hand. I let go. It stayed pinched. I took off my slipper and rubbed my new bunion. “I need tea. Can you brew me some with a Prozac infusion?”

“OK. That’s it,” he said, and yanked me off the couch. He spent the rest of the day doing his “glass is half-full” shtick. My tendency lies toward the brooding “half empty” side. I think his, in my opinion, naiveté and optimistic approach is precisely why, at age twenty-six, I decided I wanted to spend my life with him. He is good for me.

Before dinner, Bob found me listening to the same Zenith Bakelite radio that occupied the space next to the yellow bread box in the kitchen when I was six years old. “I love this,” I said, as I hummed along to an emotional Billie Holiday and watched Bob stir fry chicken and broccoli.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing a station other than one that only plays torch songs,” he said, clearly aggravated at me at this point.

“OK.” I turned the dial to WPLM and began to sing along softly to Ol’ Man River.

“I get weary, and sick of tryin’  . . .  .” Then I stood up, looked at the ceiling and belted out, “I’M TIRED OF LIVIN’, AND SCARED OF DYIN’  . . .  .” Bob rolled his eyes, then rushed to the radio and shut if off.

I set the table with my grandmother’s Steubenville china. I’ve learned lately that it’s good to use the good stuff. Plus, like so many things, it makes me feel a continued bond with grandma. There’s more to antiques than materialism. Much more.

We sat down. “Let’s talk about something fun, for a change,” Bob said. “How do you want to spend your birthday?”

“Having a colonoscopy.”

A piece of broccoli fell from his mouth to the plate. “What?”

“Everyone’s supposed to have one after they turn fifty.”

“Oh great. I’ve got a good idea. You have a colonoscopy and I’ll have a root canal. Then we’ll have cake.”

After dinner, I carefully washed Grandma’s plates and placed them back on the display shelf. I feel differently now about the things that I have that once belonged to my loved ones. Like my father’s brass humidor. Inside it, I keep the tiny prayer book from his funeral and the torn piece of black cloth that the rabbi pinned to my collar as a heart-wrenching symbol of mourning. It still tears at my soul to this day.

And there’s my grandfather’s medicine scale. To an onlooker, it appears simply as a beautiful antique - a reminder of the past. To me, it symbolizes much of his life as a Russian Jewish immigrant, who couldn’t get patients to come to his New York City medical practice until he Americanized his name from Katzen to Kassen.

And the portrait of my paternal grandfather, which has his name embossed on a brass plaque underneath his picture. Mores Perel (1880-1935). When he came through Ellis Island unable to speak English, he couldn’t spell the name Morris, so it was spelled phonetically and that’s how it stayed.

After dinner, I soaked in a soothing hot bath and gave myself a lecture. “You’re going to die anyway,” I said to myself. “You can either spend the rest of your life bummed out about the inevitable or you can enjoy every moment you can.”

Soaking wet, I climbed out of the tub and reached to the back of the towel cabinet to find an old bottle of lavender bath bubbles. I returned to the bath and settled back while the bubbles slowly reached the level of my chin. “You’ve got a wonderful husband out there,” I said. “You owe it to him and to yourself to do your damnedest to put these unnecessary blues behind you.  Don’t waste any more time getting depressed about something you can’t do anything about!”

And so, feeling pumped, I got out of the tub, dried myself off and put on my favorite blue and white striped flannel nightshirt. I trotted into the living room to find Bob. He was standing on the couch so he could wind his grandfather’s old Seth Thomas pendulum wall clock.

He was crying.

“What’s the matter?” I ran to him. He apparently turned wrong because he fell off the couch and landed on the floor  . . .  still crying.

“My grampy used to wind this clock,” he wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

“Well, isn’t it wonderful that you have it?”

“I guess so.” And he went into sobbing spasms like I’ve only seen when my two-year-old nephew lost his stuffed kitty binky.

“For God’s sake, Bob. Pull yourself together!”

He got up off the floor and went to the freezer.

“Sweetheart,” I grabbed his hand before he opened the door. “You keep telling me to live in the present. To appreciate what is now!”

“That’s crap.” He wrenched his hand away and flung open the freezer door. He found the bag of mini Reese’s we had bought for Halloween, unwrapped it at lightning speed and began stuffing the candies in his mouth, three at a time.

“No, it’s not. This moment is all we have!”

“That may be all you have. But I have chocolate.” And he polished off the bag, wiping chocolate off his chin between mouthfuls.

And so, neither Bob nor I have resolved my cliché of a mid-life crisis. But there are three things we have learned.

1. It doesn’t do any good, and only does harm to bemoan the brevity of our years. As James Taylor says, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.”

2. Looking at my father’s humidor or my grandfather’s medicine scale certainly makes me sad. But it also reminds me that I am a part of them and they are a part of me and nothing, nothing  . . .  will ever change that. This is eternally comforting.

3. Reese’s are even better when they’re frozen.