Things May Be Closer Than They Appear

Photo by Caterina Berger on Unsplah

Normally, I don’t pay much attention to my birthdays, and this one should be no different. Here I am, now 84, and if that’s not a number to ignore, I don’t know what is. I like to think that it doesn’t matter how old you are after a certain age, if it ever did. Even more, what’s magical about being 84 other than it’s one numeral higher than 83? At this age, I suppose that’s nothing to sneeze at, but there’s no reason to make a big deal out of it. I mean, it’s certainly not one of those so-called milestone birthdays like 65 or, I don’t know, 100. So why, you might reasonably ask, have I chosen to make note of this one?

Maybe it’s because it’s the age that my mother was when she died. Clearly, I’m not following in her footsteps that I know of. On the other hand, who knows? Just because something hasn’t happened today doesn’t mean that it can’t happen tomorrow. As the writing on the car mirror says, things may be closer than they appear.

Besides, I’ve been a lot closer to death before than I think I am now. Twenty-five years ago, I had a heart attack. There were no painful symptoms, just a brief tightening band across my chest that lasted no more than a few seconds while I was on an elliptical trainer. My wife urged me (gently) to go to the emergency room, but I refused (semi-stoic that I am, or, more likely, desiring to see doctors as rarely as possible; so much of my early life seemed to be comprised of doctors, hospital stays, and long stretches of time at home in bed). The next day, when I could barely keep my eyes open, my wife (more forcefully) insisted that I go to the emergency room. This time, I agreed, and sure enough, I’d had a heart attack. For the next week, I drifted in and out of consciousness (far more out than in), but I clearly remember thinking, “If this is what dying is like, it’s not so bad.” And then, I woke up one morning with my stepdaughter and wife sitting beside me in the cardiology ICU. And that was that. Something had certainly turned out to be closer than it appeared until it wasn’t.

Is it odd? I don’t think too much about my death or future. They just sit there waiting to happen, with me or without me. On the other hand, my future life (finite as it may be) is guaranteed to be less long than when I was 19. On the other hand, when I was 19, I was hardly sure that it would last until the next day, much less as long as it has. Things may be closer than they appear. Or not

I could, of course, be writing about something else today. How about Israel, or Zionism, or anti-Semitism? Can we give it a rest?

How about Donald Trump (once again). Are his eyes open or closed? Does it matter? Or Stormy Daniels or Michael Cohen? Or, maybe, Trump’s Greek Chorus of sycophants saying the things the court forbids him to say? Please, no!

Or maybe something closer to home, like the proposal to imprison the center of the hamlet of Craryville, NY, within a giant solar array. Hmmm. Maybe soon, but not today. But then, things may be closer than they appear.

What then? I’m thinking of the young man I was at 19 when the future was a confusing, confounding, incoherent mess. I hardly recognize him anymore; he’s a stranger to me. Yet I can conjure him up without great effort; give me a moment or sufficient motivation, and he’s there. I shudder at the thought. But because I know that I can conjure that younger self up, I know that he is still with me, within me, gone but never forgotten.

Is it any surprise that songwriters have embraced that idea? Jim Steinman wrote a song titled "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are.” His early life still haunted him.

“And though the nightmares should be over
Some of the terrors are still intact
I'll hear that ugly, coarse and violent voice
And then he grabs me from behind
And then he pulls me back

 
But it was long ago, and it was far away
Oh God, it seems so very far
And if life is just a highway
Then the soul is just a car
And objects in the rearview mirror
May appear closer than they are”

“Objects” was one of the many Steinman songs that Meat Loaf recorded as part of the second album of his “Bat Out of Hell” trilogy, a series that contained many highly emotional and dramatic songs. Released in 1993, sixteen years after the original “Bat Out of Hell” album, many were quick to think the song was about Meat Loaf’s own very difficult, much-abused childhood, but it wasn’t. Nonetheless, as distant as he felt from his early days, his monsters still haunted him as they did Steinman, they still affected him, still lived inside him. Things may be closer than they appear.

The monsters of my past were nowhere near as dramatic; they were merely chaotic. Where was I in the world, what was I/who was I in the world, how did I fit into the world, could I fit into the world? I had no answers. Until, that is, I began to find something. I went to a rehearsal of a play, “An Epitaph for George Dillon.” Suddenly, I began to see the world in a whole new light, a world that, perhaps, existed in a more contained place, a world I could more easily understand, create, and control — a place from which I could begin to create a life. That was 65 years ago, a long time by anyone’s measure, a lifetime ago, a whole person or two or three ago. And yet I remember him — that 19-year-old me — clearly; he still lives within me. Things may be closer than they appear.

Roseanne Cash approached the idea a bit differently. In her song “Closer Than I Appear,” she is the object seen in her rearview mirror. What she sees is her fear of vulnerability born out of loss and her struggle to overcome it so that she can fully love again.

“Lock all the doors and turn out the lights,

we’ll work this thing through till we get it right.

But if I seem angry and cold or I don’t speak at all,

it’s just that old fear

’cause baby, I’m closer than I appear.”

The song appears on the “Rules of Travel” album, released on March 25, 2003. One of the album’s songs, “September When It Comes,” is sung with her father, Johnny Cash.

“When the shadows lengthen

And burn away the past

They will fly me like an angel to

A place where I can rest

When this begins, I'll let you in

September when it comes,”

Johnny Cash died on September 12, 2003, just six months after the album was released. Things may be closer than they appear.

And so, it is my birthday—84 years old, another number in a long string of them. It’s been a life in which I’ve seen a lot and done a lot. It’s been a life with few regrets, although one that’s had its share of pain and loss. It’s also one that’s been full of accomplishment but, at least as important, full of the love of family and friends. As Meat Loaf sang on the first “Bat Out of Hell” album, two out of three ain’t bad.

And my future? It stretches out long and unending before me; I don’t see an end, any more than I saw an end to my wife and I being together when we first started dating forty years ago. I still don’t. But you know what they say: “Things may be closer, blah, blah, blah.