Most Meaningful Complement

The other day I had lunch with my friend Edee, a woman who has a prominent place in my pantheon of friends who've done exceedingly well in life. Edee grew up in a working class Hialeah house with a brother and single mom. Unlike many single moms divorced or never married to deadbeat dads, Edee's mother's ex was a Maine gringo who left her and the kids in Miami to return to his home state and become a millionaire oil distributor.

Even though Edee's father thoroughly ignored her, Edee insisted on keeping a relationship with the man. Once, when Edee was keeping two jobs and still maintaining her 4.0 gpa, she asked her father if she might borrow some tuition money so she'd "only have to keep" one of her jobs. His answer, in his clipped Yankee accent "Edee --I could help you, but you'll think higher of yourself if ya do it alone!" I only hope there's a special place in hell for this piece of crap.

Despite this so called father, Edee worked herself hard, got a B.S., a Master's, and finally a P.hD from one of the nation's most prestigious Neuroscience colleges. She's now an internationally recognized Neuroscientist and Professor, who sits on NIH boards and lectures all over the world. In the meantime, she never sold any of the "starter houses" she lived in while getting her degrees, and built up a VERY comfortable real estate portfolio. Oh yeah --she's also a great mother and wife who somehow balances lectureships in Australia with visits to her little boy's school.

Anyway...years ago Edee and I were talking about our parents, and I told her that, among all of the many lucky things in my life, the minimum amount my parents screwed me up was at the top of the list. I recounted to her the day I told my father I was dropping out of pre-med, and the failure I felt telling a second generation Jewish American Dad that he was never going to utter the words that would have exceeded winning the lottery or being US President "My son, the doctor." My father, without missing a beat, responded that he wondered how long this "science thing" was going to last, since he knew my true strengths were in English, and how proud he was that I was pursuing a course of study he wished he could have, had he gone to college.

Edee's reply: "Dave, imagine meeting an utterly abject loser in a bar. He's 40 years old, never held a real job, an alcoholic and drug addict, failed in relationships --the whole nine yards of a wasted human being. He tells you how, at 20 years old, he had it all. He was an honors scholarship student at a university, dating lots of girls, had tons of friends. And then one fateful day, the person closest to him in his life, his wonderful, saint-like father, died in his arms as he was giving him CPR, and the snot was blowing out of his nose (she remembered the ghastly details of July 14, 1982), etc... THIS, the loser tells you, is the reason he's ended up this way. The point being, of course, that you could have taken that path, Dave, instead of becoming who you've become. There are ALWAYS excuses in life. Losers just seem to be much more adept at finding excuses than solutions."

Well, I always try to deflect complements, but this one has stayed with me, since it happens to jibe with my deepest held philosophy. Bad, even tragic, things, happen to all of us. The measure of a person, in my view, is how they deal with those trials and go on from there.

Anyway, as I type these dribblings, Edee's off in her lab Downtown, teaching some spinal chord patient the latest rehab techniques. When the news breaks in a few years that they've found a "cure" for paralysis, I have no doubt that Edee's name will be among the authors in the groundbreaking paper. I'll clink her glass mug (we always have a few beers together near the University), and be thrilled for her.

She's done it all herself.