Category Archives: Prose

Genealogy’s Original Face

Genealogy produces a family heirloom – the heirloom is the family.

I started a family tree in preparation for a “roots tour” to visit my grandparents’ home towns in Eastern Europe, and was quickly able to identify 80+ ancestors as far back as 5 generations, over 150 years, thanks to trees already assembled by others. This of course leads me to wonder who will be looking back on us 150 years from now? What will they see? 

The Zen koan refers to your “original face” which is defined in a question:

What did your face look like before your parents were born?

No amount of genealogy or genetics would allow me to imagine the original face of my great-grandchildren before my grandchildren are born. But I choose to believe that they are all smiling.

Remembrance, 9-11-11

    Remembrance, 9-11-11

Michael Gollin

You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart.
Then people gonna treat you better
You’re gonna find, yes, you will
That you’re beautiful as you feel.

The lyrics to “Beautiful” by Carole King popped into my head, fully formed, as I woke up, on the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001. That was unusual for me. I do not usually remember lyrics without strenuous efforts at memorization. I found a recording of “Beautiful” and realized I had been visited by a vision (a song, actually) that was just right for my remembrance of that fateful day.

    You’ve got to get up every morning…

Labor Day fell on September 3 that year. School had started in August. We went to New York for Aunt Irma and Uncle Allen’s 50th anniversary celebration on Saturday. That Sunday morning was beautiful and we finally got to visit the World Trade Center observation deck on the South Tower. The city had been foggy during our previous attempt to go up and show the kids, so we bailed out that time. During our time living in New York, Jill and I had each separately been to Windows of the World, and she had been out on the observation deck, but I never had the chance in my six years living in NY or 10 years of visits thereafter, so we were all looking forward to it that day. We rode the express elevator 101 stories up and enjoyed the exhibits. Natasha, and Julia, and I then rode up the final floors to the top, strolled around the elevated walk among the antennas, and enjoyed the spectacular view. I have a happy photo of the two of them on the roof, with uptown and blue sky behind them. Max wouldn’t go up on the roof and stayed downstairs by the Sbarro’s because he said he was afraid a plane might crash into the building. From the windows, you could see planes flying around in the vicinity. He turned 7 on 9/4. Natasha was 9 and Julia was 4. I was a youthful 44.

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    With a smile on your face…

Back home the next week, we hustled out the door after breakfast on the Tuesday, with me and Natasha in the front and Max and Julia in the back of my Civic. Jill stayed home. It was another beautiful day. As we drove across Old Bowie’s 10th St., crossing the power lines toward the intersection with Rte 197, the NPR announcer said a small plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Hey, I said to the kids, we were just there! The news reports began at about 8:50, four minutes after the crash. Julia was due at the Bowie Montessori Children’s House pre-K at 9 am, less than 10 minutes from home. We drove down the wooded drive to the drop off circle and left her with the attendants and watched as she went up the hill to her class room with her green Montessori book bag and lunch box. I had no sense of any relevance of the seeming accidental crash at the time, and was still cheerful. You hear a lot of unfortunate news on NPR Morning Edition and you can’t let it ruin your day.

    And show the world all the love in your heart…

As I left the Montessori school and drove toward Glenarden Woods Elementary School, about 10-15 minutes further down 193 and Annapolis Road, we kept listening to the news. It sounded like it was actually a jet airliner that had crashed into the North tower. That sounded more like a hijacking. Somewhere along Martin Luther King Drive I heard that a second plane had hit the south tower after the first plane hit. Now I was getting worried. This was clearly an attack. I turned off on Glenarden Parkway and called Jill on my cell phone. It seemed to me that it was safe for the kids to be in school in Prince George’s County. There were no targets there that a terrorist would even think of. And a strong voice in me said “resist.” Don’t let them have their victory of terrorizing us into sacrificing the things we cherish. Education for the kids. And I was going to work, damn it. So I dropped off Natasha for 5th grade and Max for 2nd. It was a new school for him that year, after three years at the Montessori. The drop off was routine as I recall.

    And people gonna treat you better…

By 9:30 I was on Rte 50E heading into DC, listening intently to the news and trying to make sense of it. Traffic was slow. Reports came in about 9:40 that another jet had crashed into the Pentagon. Now it was not just New York that was being attacked but us in DC. I kept going. A little after 10, the reporter announced that the South Tower had collapsed. I felt suddenly nauseous. I knew that about 50,000 people worked in the twin towers. I couldn’t fathom how many people might have just died. And I sensed the significance of the loss of the iconic power of the towers, never loved as beautiful, but respected and relied on as part of New York’s core. At 10:30 when the North Tower collapsed, the gravity of the situation and my grief both deepened.

Then, way off to the southwest, over the Anacostia and Potomac valley I could see a smudge of smoke blowing eastward. I knew that was the Pentagon burning. What could I do? The kids were safe, Jill was home, and how would this impact me or stop me from doing my work. Traffic was heavy, but I kept going. I pulled into my parking lot across from 1201 New York Ave before 11, a 2 hour drive. The attendant said they were evacuating DC, a bomb exploded at the State Department, and I should leave. I went into the building and colleagues were leaving. Everyone was concerned and full of advice. I rode the elevator up to my 9th floor office and got some files. I was there for a few minutes, then accepted the evacuation and came back down, got my car, and started a long drive home. It was hard to call Jill, to check with the school, to let the teachers know I would come get the kids.

Traffic was heavier than ever but people were well-behaved. It was probably about 2 I got to Glenarden Woods. Jill got Julia. We got milk at the 7-11 and went home.

    You’re gonna find, yes you will, that you’re beautiful as you feel.

    We hunkered down in front of the TV and worried. Jill and I worried that Max would feel guilty like he had predicted it, or even somehow caused it. That never happened. We worried that people we knew were killed. I worried that I didn’t know who did it, or why. I worried that more attacks were coming. And for the first day, I worried about a death toll that would rival the Vietnam war. The number of lives lost would be “more than any of us can bear” said Mayor Giuliani. Amazingly, it dropped down below 10,000, below 5,000, below 3,000. Many evacuated the towers safely, but also the terrorists struck early, too early to catch many people who were still on the subways or on their way in to work for the usual New York starting time of 9:30.

    The next day I think the schools were open. I did make it to work, in an all-personnel meeting managing Partner Jim Shea called in the conference room, that turned into an impromptu mourning session, called that my partner Todd Reuben went down in the Pentagon, on his first business trip to Los Angeles for a client. His wife and children accepted the consolations of many of us a few days later.

    Soccer practice proceeded Thursday. I remember lots of parents there with folding chairs, and how clear blue the sky looked with no jet contrails. It was three days before jets took off again. Brother in law Robin had to rent a car in Atlanta to get back home to St. Louis. Others were stranded overseas. The rescue and firefighting continued.

    I started a quest to understand who were these attackers? Where did they come from? What motivated them? And importantly, how many of them were there? I knew instantly that the villainization of Islam was a terrible mistake. I began a renewed spiritual journey into the human heart and my own heart that continues to this day, at a remembrance service at my Goodloe Unitarian Universalist congregation. Even the overtly sentimental and patriotic recitations and sentiments expressed in the official media, including today’s Sunday comics, are acceptable and understandable. After 10 years, we can rip off the bandage, but the wound is still raw. 10 years of official political violence and corruption have masked the original valor and tenacity of the “first responders” and second and third and later responders, and the grief and shocking loss of so many lives. The thousands of short obituaries published in the NY Times made me cry each time I read them. Normal people, cut short and stolen from their loved ones. But the Bush crowd and their craven misappropriation of the events for their own political power have held my angry gaze for a decade. On the other hand, our worst fears of a dirty bomb or a bioweapon never came to pass. I would forgive much of the Bush-Rove agenda but for the attack on Iraq and the adoption of torture. The Homeland Security apparatus is far too much, but I understand it.

    I did not go help dig out people, or take in victims. I did not do everything I could. I empathized with my cousins and friends in NY for their displacement, and the loss of those they knew. I did follow a resolution that I made to commit my time, energy and money to defeat George Bush as soon as he invaded Iraq. I became more politically active and religiously involved. I started a nonprofit organization, Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors (www.piipa.org), to provide intellectual property law assistance to developing countries so they can benefit from innovation as a path out of nihilism and hopelessness. I tried to become a better husband and father. I like to think I’ve never let my family down and have been a good citizen of the US, protecting our freedoms, and of the world, seeking to find and channel positive creative energy as an antidote to evil.

    Carole King’s lyrics in “Beautiful” are a pure, simple, and joyful approach to life and I am convinced she is right. You’ve got to get up every morning, and what you do then is up to you. I do believe that over time, a smile on your face and love in your heart hold more sway than violence and hate. My goal is to follow King’s advice, put a smile on my face and show the world all the love in my heart. Then, if she is right, we will all find that we are as beautiful as we feel.

    ***

Blue as the Sky

Blue as the Sky
Michael Gollin
May 2013

Once in a while, but not every day, we face a decision that leads to momentous consequences for ourselves or others — life or death, joy or sorrow, blessings or curse, fame or infamy, wealth or poverty. Out of the tapestry of little choices we make in a day, a week, a year, a few stand out as fateful decisions –drum roll, please – Which school to accept, which job, which mate? Where to put our money – buy this house? Where to live? We learn to approach these decisions in our own way and they come to express our identity.

Fateful decisions define who we are. We all ask the eternal question, “Who am I?” One answer is, “I am the sum of the choices I have made.” You can use Latin to say “I am homo decidere.” I am the person who decides – literally, the one who has cut off other alternatives. I am the paths I have taken, and I am not the alternatives I rejected. I will become the choices that I will make in the future.

One of my favorite lines in literature comes from Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise, at the end of the chapter called “The Superman Grows Careless.” Protagonist Amory Blaine, distracted and struggling academically at Princeton, has finished summer school , trying to redeem himself, to stay in school, and to continue his literary achievements. His roommate hands him an envelope from the registrar. Inside is a pink slip signifying success, or a blue slip meaning he failed, may flunk out, and must resign his magazine editor position. His friends gather around him. Suspense builds as he slits open the envelope, looks inside and says dramatically:

“Blue as the sky, gentlemen….”

What does that phrase mean? Instead of sheepishly accepting what would seem to most of us to be a terrible blow, and one due to his own laziness, Amory decides to express his fate with an artful simile of freedom and beauty. A blue sky is heavenly, promising, a gift of clear weather. He saw bad news and found good wrapped within it. He had already chosen to be an academic slacker. When he learned of the logical consequence of his actions, he chose to make the most of the moment. He chose to react poetically to what his own deeds, and the decisions of others, had presented to him. His choices led him up to that bad moment, and then he made the best of it, entertaining his friends.

Reading that passage decades ago as a neither-bottom-nor-top of my class Princetonian, I respected the poise and bravado of facing that moment that way. Now I have a more mature perspective – or at least I hope I do.

The myriad of little choices we make every day can prepare us for the big ones. Thoughtful people work proactively to create options and open doors for themselves. Especially in the US, a central part of living your life well involves learning to make good decisions that advance your happiness and that of your community. Study hard, work hard, stay healthy, do not abuse alcohol or drugs, or other people — be good and be kind. But everyone, even the most self-possessed, fortunate, and hard-working person from time to time faces the problem of how to react to whatever shocks life presents out of its own whims.

Bad news is a test, and we pass or fail each time. As Job realized, the parts of our fate that we control are quite limited. We must accept that fate, or nature, or God, or strangers, can and will trump every choice we make. But even if we did not bring our fate upon ourselves, we can still decide how to react. And moreover, I think that a life well-lived, defined by good decisions that we make within that constrained set of things we can control, actually does prepare us to handle whatever fate brings upon us out of the vast universe of things beyond our control.

When Amory Blaine received his failure notice, he reacted sophomorically, but grandly, making this a “blue sky” moment for him and his friends. Did he learn anything from his troubles? Apply himself to his studies, straighten up, try to help others to succeed? Not so much – it didn’t suit the character or the novel. As readers, we can identify with his bad news bravado. We can also see that the blue slip of failure could have been accepted as more of a cloudy sky than a blue one, presaging bad weather.

Why does this matter to me now? Because while I welcome blue skies, I see that even cloudy skies have silver linings. In summer 2012, I started to see the bad signs fate was giving me about my health. Despite a near perfect exercise regimen, diet, and emotional well-being, I found myself stumbling, slowing down, with weakened hand and slurring speech. I challenged myself through my activities, and found that no choice or decision I could make would improve my condition. So I checked WebMD and other sources and recognized I probably had a neurological disorder. I went to my doctor, then to a neurologist who had me do blood tests and MRIs, and nerve and muscle electrophysiology tests, then to the ALS clinic at Johns Hopkins. In the meantime, I read the detailed criteria for a diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), and the differential diagnosis distinguishing other diseases with overlapping symptoms. I read about the average life expectancy of 2-5 years, and the grim course of the illness leading to loss of the ability to eat and to breathe. While hoping for a diagnosis of a treatable illness, I had been telling my wife and kids “hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

There, a half day of testing confirmed what I suspected. The specialist sat me down, and with a grim face said that he was sorry, but the tests confirmed that I had ALS. My response?

“That sucks.”

Not quite worthy of Fitzgerald, but it worked for me. What I learned with my diagnosis was that from now on I had to deal with the worst of all the options I had considered.

The doctor agreed, “Yes, it does.” And the next chapter of my life began in that fateful moment.

After receiving information about follow up visits, I set off on my way back home. Daughter Julia had asked the previous day for a regulation weight Frisbee so she could practice for the high school Frisbee team. I stopped at a few stores but it was October and they had none in stock. I went home for dinner and began by apologizing that I was empty handed. My wife asked about my doctor visit.

“I have good news and bad news.”

What’s the good news, she asked.

“I’m very good at self-diagnosis.”

Her face fell, and so did my daughter’s, and so began the long process of communicating my new reality to others.

The words I chose that day were only words, of course, not a grand action or a major decision. Nothing heroic. But as with “blue as the sky, gentlemen,” those first exchanges with my doctor and my family helped me decide how to approach life with a terminal incurable progressive disease. I was blunt, realistic, and honest with myself and others, and I looked for humorous or at least tolerable ways to think about the unthinkable, and to speak about the unspeakable.

And we found a Frisbee on Amazon and ordered it that day.

The decisions I made in those moments have been followed by countless others: How to tell my other children, parents, siblings? What to do about work? What about insurance? How would our savings hold up? What about my will? What positive impacts should I leave on the world? How would I spend my remaining time? How would I face the small things, like playing with my children?

These decisions continue to define who I am, and who I am not. I am not someone who gives up. I am not someone who leaves others in the lurch. I am not in denial. Nor am I hopeless. I am not someone who misses a beautiful sunset, a game of catch, my own overall fitness. I am someone who strives for perfect health – with one unavoidable exception. Someone who tries hard to love my wife, my children, my parents, siblings, cousins, friends, co-workers, and as much of humanity as I can.

I decided to celebrate life, to spend time with my family, to continue practicing law for my preferred clients and to benefit my law firm colleagues, because rewarding work is one of life’s great privileges and I enjoy those rewards built on a career of 35 years of decisions since I graduated college (unlike Fitzgerald) – and even before then. I will do what I can to accelerate research to find a cure for ALS, perhaps for myself, but definitely for everyone else who will contract the disease for years to come – over 100,000 per year, worldwide. As I learn about exercise and supplements and other things that could help ALS patients, I will share that with others, and I am mobilizing a public platform to do that.

And I will travel and play and write and laugh and cry and enjoy life every day, to the best of my ability, for as long as I can. Fate does not define who we are. Rather, fate presents us with opportunities to decide who we are.

My closing thought is a wish for each of us to be prepared to make the right choices, especially the most difficult ones. Even if the sky is cloudy, we can mine the silver linings. And we can reflect on our choices and our luck – good or bad – and celebrate them publicly with “blue sky” style.

***

Running for Life – The Running Song

    Running for life – The Running Song

Michael Gollin
October 2012

I knew something was wrong in mid-August when I finished the Falmouth Road Race. A few days later I told my doctor I was there to see him because I ran 7.2 miles in the humid heat and it took me 1:16. We both chuckled and he said he was jealous. But I explained that in past years I’d run the same course in just over an hour. Despite rigorous training, I was getting slower, and feeling weak. My right foot felt like it was slapping the pavement and my right hand was losing its grip, and cramping. I had lost five pounds.

Running became a central part of my life four years ago, when family members and friends convinced me to join 12,000 others in the Falmouth Road Race, which winds along the beaches and through the picturesque woods and towns of Cape Cod. The road racing boom we are enjoying today can be traced back 40 years, when a Falmouth bartender started the race to honor Frank Shorter’s 1972 Olympic Marathon victory. Shorter runs this race most years at a good-humored pace that allows a lot of us to brag that we raced against an Olympian and won. For me, Falmouth had become the core of my annual running plan, just long enough to be a real test of grit and training, but short enough to keep the day job, and bring the kids into the team. Each year I had been pushing closer to the 60 minute mark and thought I could do it this year, but I just couldn’t.

I kept running through September, including a short run over the Brooklyn Bridge, but I didn’t get any faster. The doctors spoke of various explanations, none of them good. I told myself that fitness has positive side effects, and as long as I was running, everything would be OK. Friends said hey, you’re 55, you’re not young anymore. I backed off to easy 2.6m and 5k runs, accepted my more leisurely pace, and took the time to enjoy my surroundings. A tune came to me one day, and I named it Running Song and put lyrics to it in subsequent outings, humming the tune to keep time. (see https://innovationlifelove.org/2014/05/05/id-rather-be-running/) My jackrabbit son slowed his pace to join me a few times. Despite my fears, this was a beautiful period, and running helped me fully experience the miracle and joys of late summer life.

Bad news came at the beginning of October, after a battery of tests including electrophysiology and 3 MRI’s. The neurology specialist at Johns Hopkins diagnosed me as having the early stage of ALS, a degenerative disorder commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which involves the gradual breakdown of motor neurons, and atrophy of muscles throughout the body. What was happening to my hand and foot was going to expand to my whole body, including limbs, trunk and head. There is no cure. ALS patients lose the ability to eat and breathe, and average life expectancy is 3-5 years, with a small chance of living 10 years or more. With that diagnosis, I was suddenly living a worst case scenario.

And yet, when I woke up the next morning, I was truly happy to be alive, and I got up and went for my run. This time I had a new experience that I’ve never heard a runner talk about — I choked up, and broke into uncontrollable sobs at the half mile mark, and again after about a mile. I ran right through them and finished a bit faster than my previous time, and felt at peace.

That weekend, I ran a new charity race, a 5.4K lap around the Crofton Parkway in the neighboring Maryland town, with yard sales and kids selling lemonade on the sidewalk. A bald eagle circled over the starting line while the fire department played the national anthem. I ran it in 32:55, 4 minutes faster than the previous weekend. My wife and I congratulated a 40ish 1st time racer who had quit smoking and started training 8 weeks before, and finished in 40:00, with his father in law at his side. He was clearly euphoric about how running had changed his life. I felt great, too.

I know my body very well from years of tracking running times, pulse, breathing, weight, and the myriad of small pains and sensations that tell us what’s really going on. Running also keeps me attuned to the workings of my mind. Feelings of strength and courage, resolve and optimism alternate with weakness, despair and disappointment over minor failures. Raw competitiveness (I’m going to pass this guy!) blends with true generosity and community (Looking good, keep it up!). These emotions exercise our minds and spirits just as training and racing exercises our muscles and sinews. Running is medicine. And I will keep doing it as long as I can.

Believe it or not, there are advantages to being diagnosed with a terminal disease. Every day is a gorgeous gift and I wake up passionate about doing the best I can and relishing every moment. My wife, kids, and friends have been amazingly supportive, and I realize that I am not alone, and lots of good things are going to happen in my life. The other day, when we were speaking about my plans to run Falmouth again next August, my 15 year old daughter suddenly volunteered that she will join me – despite having rebuffed invitations for years. I can be a good role model and I plan to use what leverage I have. I’m suddenly more interested in the wheel chair racers. There are many opportunities to do charity.

I have no complaints. Even though I’ve been dealt a bad hand, I’ve had a lot of really good ones to play. Runners know that there’s nothing wrong with struggle. Human nature turns challenges into opportunities, and the very effort offers a path to deeper meaning – win or lose. Life is good, and running helps make it better. I plan to enjoy both as much as possible for as long as I can. I’m training for my next race.