Excerpt

With Jazz

I never paid much attention to current events, all the trouble in the world you hear about. I was too busy raising a family. But my children have all gone now and I’ve started to think about things that go on. Why would my daughter live with a man and get ready to raise a baby and refuse to marry the guy? Why would my son live in a cabin by the river and not see a soul for months on end? But that’s just personal. I’m thinking of the bigger picture, too. It seems a person barely lives long enough to begin to see where his little piece fits in the universal puzzle. I’m not old but I imagine that old people start to figure out how to live just when it’s too late. These thoughts come up at my weekly neighborhood group. It started out as a weight-reducing club, but we kept meeting even after we all got skinny. Now on Fridays after work a bunch of us get together at somebody’s house and talk about life, in a sort of talk-show format. Although we laugh a lot, for us it’s survival. And it helps me think. It’s so hard to be nice to people. It’s something you have to learn. I try to be nice, but it’s complicated. You start feeling guilty for your own failures of generosity at just about the same point in life when you start feeling angry, even less willing to give. The two feelings collide—feeling gracious and feeling mean. When you get really old, they say, you go right back to being a child, spiteful and selfish, and you don’t give a damn what people think. In between childhood and old age, you have this bubble of consciousness—and conscience. It’s enough to drive you