The Owner's Manual

 When my friends and I used to sit around the cheap dining room table in Apartment 22 Z at UM, in the early 80s, we thought we had life figured out. Study hard, get into grad school, study hard there, get good jobs, marry a nice girl, and all of life's good things would follow.

By the Fall of my senior year, I had brought a wrinkle to our confident discussions: my Dad had died the previous Summer. That wasn't in the plan -- he was 63, and supposed to proudly attend my college graduation -- the first in my family with a 4 year degree. I guess that taught us the life owner manual we thought we had instead had glaring deficiencies.

My friend and Rabbi Yossi says we DO have such a manual - -it's called the Torah. If we just study this, which the religious believe is the actual word of the Big Man -- well -- life isn't too complicated. There is a time to live, and a time to die. A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing, etc...

I wished I believed in that -- it sure would simplify things. But I'd have to miss my beloved Canes tailgate parties and games -- they violate the sabbath! So for now, I appreciate the Good Book, but don't follow it to a T.

This am I had breakfast with my brother Norman, and we discussed this. How many curveballs get pitched to us? A lot.

Any batter expects curveballs, but maybe we former know it all college students get surprised at the quality and variety of the pitches we face in this life.

We love and educate and support our kids, and some don't launch, as the saying goes. But I guess the answer to that is that each of our kids, no matter how privileged, has to find her own way.

Hell -- I should completely know this by now. January of 2021, we were dealing with The Plague, but coming to understand it probably wouldn't kill us or our loved ones. We were able to hold and play with our grandson, who had just passed a year old.

The Ds were married to fine men. D1 had a lovely house, and D2 was house hunting. Wifey and I were sort of sitting high on the hill, admiring the fruits of the orchard we had planted. And then she called me inside to help her after she fell -- she was having a stroke.

Well at that moment, things could have gone one of three ways. She could have died, or could have been rendered completely disable, or she could have faced a long recovery that would lead her to essentially a normal life.

I assembled Team Wifey -- my trusted friends, who were doctors. The helped us make every medical decision. 

And the Big Man smiled, and now, nearly three years later, she bears almost no effects of that terrible event.

On the other hand, the healthiest of our friends, Elizabeth, who became my ally in trying to get Wifey to move and exercise, instead of sitting in a chair on the phone for hours, was taken. That awful loss is still somehow unreal -- again -- not in the life manual my college brothers and I thought we knew.

So I guess that's just how it is. Sometimes you bet on the favorite, at the track, and he comes in last. But sometimes you take the long shot, and he pays off big.

All I know is, 2023 is nearly in the books. What will 2024 bring? I thought 2020, in my Freshman English symbolism analysis, would be the year of "perfect vision." Maybe it was -- it was just that the vision showed much more rot than I had anticipated.

So 2024? What's it hold in store? The only thing I'm pretty sure of is that it will NOT adhere to the Owner's Manual of Life.