The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead (2 page)

Decline and Fall (i)

All mammals age; the only animals that don't age are some of the more primitive ones: sharks, alligators, Galapagos tortoises. There are different theories as to why humans age at the rate they do: aging is genetically controlled (maladapted individuals die out and well-adapted ones persevere); the rate of aging within each species has developed for the good of each species; an entropy-producing agent disrupts cells; smaller mammals tend to have high metabolic rates and die at an earlier age than larger mammals do; specific endocrine or immune systems are particularly vulnerable and accelerate dysfunction for the whole organism; errors in DNA transcription lead to genetic errors that accelerate death. All of these theories are disputed: no one knows why we age.

Schopenhauer said, “Just as we know our walking to be only a constantly prevented falling, so is the life of our body only a constantly prevented dying, an ever-deferred death.” (Dad: “Why would a supposedly wise man want to think this way?”)

“As we get older,” the British poet Henry Reed helpfully observed, “we do not get any younger.”

On average, infants sleep 20 hours a day, 1-year-olds sleep 13 hours a day, teenagers sleep 9 hours, 40-year-olds sleep 7 hours, 50-year-olds sleep 6 hours, and people 65 and older sleep 5 hours. As you get older, you spend more time lying awake at night and, once asleep, you're much more easily aroused. The production of melatonin, which regulates the sleep cycle, is reduced with age, which is one of the reasons why older people experience more insomnia. By age 65, an unbroken night of sleep is rare; 20 percent of the night consists of lying awake. As I constantly have to remind my now light-sleeping father, people ages 73 to 92 awake, on average, 21 times a night owing to disordered breathing.

An infant breathes 40 to 60 times a minute; a 5-year-old, 24 to 26 times; an adolescent, 20 to 22 times; an adult (beginning at age 25), 16 times. Over the course of your life, you're likely to take about 850 million breaths.

As a mammal, you get “milk teeth” by the end of your first year, then a second set that emerges as you leave infancy. When children start school, most of them have all of their baby teeth, which they'll lose before they're 12. By 13, most children have acquired all of their permanent teeth except their wisdom teeth. The third molars, or “wisdom teeth,” usually emerge between ages 20 and 21; their roots mature between ages 18 and 25. As you age, your plaque builds up, your gums retreat, your teeth wear down, and you have more cavities and periodontal disease. The last few years, as my father's gums have shrunk, bone has rubbed up against his dentures, causing pain whenever he chews.

Children's fingernails grow one millimeter a week. Toenails grow one-quarter as fast as fingernails—one millimeter a month. Pianists' and typists' fingernails grow faster than others'. Fingernail growth is fastest in November, slowest in July, and less rapid at night. The first and fifth digits grow more slowly; in severe cold weather, fingernails grow more slowly. From age 30 until 80, fingernail growth slows by 50 percent. Contrary to myth, Dad, your nails and hair don't keep growing after you die.

Boys vs. Girls (i)

The XX and XY chromosome pairings create females and males, respectively. Females have an advantage in having two X chromosomes to rely on throughout life, because the second X chromosome provides a backup if something goes wrong with a gene on the first one. A female with a disease-carrying gene on one of her X chromosomes can use the normal gene on the other X chromosome and avoid the expression of the disease, though she still carries the gene.

Female is the “default” sex: if you don't get a signal to form testes, your germ cells form ovaries and you become female. It takes the positive action of genes on the Y chromosome to make a potentially female body into a male body.

Women have a slower metabolism than men, beginning at conception: male embryos divide faster than female ones. The faster metabolic rate makes men's cells more vulnerable to breakdown; the entire male life cycle is completed more promptly than the female one.

Y-bearing sperm travel a little faster than X-bearing sperm; about 51 percent of newborn babies are male. Even more than 51 percent of conceptions are male, but male fetuses are more likely to undergo spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and miscarriages than females. Premature girls tend to fare better than premature boys do. More boys than girls die in infancy.

Despite their slower metabolism, girls, at birth, are more advanced in bone development than boys. By the time they start school, girls are ahead of boys by approximately one year, and by third grade they're one and a half years advanced.

         

Until I was 9, I was the fastest person I knew. I ran to the store, around the block, to school, up the stairs, away from people, with people, toward people, on dirt, on sand, on asphalt, on the beach, in bare feet, in sneakers, in sandals, in boots, in good thin tight shiny laced black shoes. I had no hair on my legs, had legs hard as rubber, tanned as an Indian. My girlfriend was 9 and ran, too. We ran together. We raced, and she won; I thought she got a false start and demanded a rematch. She said no. I took off my sneakers, threw them into the lake, stepped on twigs, rocks, glass in my bare feet. She ran away from me. A few years later she started smoking cigarettes, lost her wind, and became a cheerleader.

Origins

Holding on to the plastic strap that was attached to my rocking horse's ears and mouth (name: Peaches; it was peach-colored and I liked peaches), I hoisted myself onto the saddle and wriggled around in my pajamas until I was comfortable and ready to ride. One cracked glass eye shone out of the right side of his head, the left eye having shattered in a previous skirmish, and his mouth, once bright red and smiling, was now chipped away to a tight-lipped and unpainted pout. His nose, too, was bruised, with gashes for nostrils, and he had a thick brown mane that, extending from the crown of his head nearly to his waist, was made from my grandmother's discarded wigs and glued to the wood. I pulled on the plastic strap that served as the rein, wrapped it around my fist, and slid my feet into the leather stirrups that hung from his waist.

I bounced up and down and set him in motion, rocking, tilting, sliding. The runner skidded slightly on the wooden floor. I sat up, leaning forward, pressing my lips to the back of his hairy neck, and said, “Don't creak. Don't make noise.” (Infantile, naïve, I thought I could talk to wooden animals.) I wrapped my arms around his neck and kicked my legs back and forth in the stirrups, then lay my cheek against the back of his head, pressing myself to his curves and carved-out shapes. When he pitched forward, I scooted up toward the bottom of his spine, and when he swung back, I let go of the leather strap and leaned back as far as I could so that I was causing his motions at the same time I was trying to get in perfect rhythm with them. I twisted my hips and bounced my thighs until it felt warm under me. My pajamas itched and stuck to my legs. My skin felt wet. No one knew; no one could know. I knew it was private, but I didn't know why. Forgetting that I should have been in bed and, if not under the covers, at least not creating such a commotion, I rocked faster, drove him across the floor and toward the far wall by jerking my body forward in the seat and squeezing my knees into his sides.

When my father opened the door and turned on the light, I turned Peaches away from him and the runner glanced off his foot. It felt warm under me and I wasn't going to stop. “Giddyup.”

“Daver Baver,” my father said, clearly amused by my equestrianship but attempting to embody the law. Such is my memory, anyway; who knows how accurate these recollections are? I was 4, maybe 5. “Your mother and sister are trying to sleep. I was trying to sleep. You'll wake up the house.”

“I'll be quiet, Daddy.”

“You need to get back in bed, Daver B.”

“But I'm not tired.”

“Do you have any idea what time—”

“It feels so good.”

Each time Peaches rocked forward, I bumped my crotch up against the smooth surface of the seat and my whole body tingled. I clutched my horse and made him lurch crazily away from my father and toward the wall. I bucked back and forth until it hurt and I couldn't ride any longer. My dad brought Peaches to a halt from behind, picked me up by the waist, and twirled me round and round the room—Airplane!—then brought me down, tossing me onto the bed. Whee. Then he sang me to sleep with my favorite song, about a boy and his daddy and a mockingbird.

         

I have a recurring dream in which I open the front door to my childhood home, and my father has a slanted block of wood, the door stop, in his hand. Without his glasses, in the unlit hallway, he thinks I'm a burglar. He's going to stop me with a 3"-by-5" piece of wood. He squeezes the wood and gets a sliver in his palm, dropping the door stop on his shoes. (Dad as unlikely Cerberus.)

It's good to see you, Father, I say, although I've never in my life called him “Father.”

There's no light on in the house. It's 4:00 in February and I want a lamp, a candle, or a fire to take the cold off the walls and out of the wooden floors. The windows are shut and the shades are drawn.

Don't track dirty snow into the house, he says. Go shake your shoes off outside. (Suddenly my dad is Martha Stewart? So, too, growing up in California, I didn't see snow until I went East to college.)

Random walls of snowdrifts rise out of the field, and in the dismal sun the trees reflect onto the snow like huge, broken umbrellas. The wind sweeps the snow off the ground, through the trees, and against the windows of the house.

In the living room, he rocks in his chair, with his feet on the stool. His hands are folded in his lap—a semi-feminine figure. He opens his mouth, but no words come out. Newspapers (containing articles he's written? I think so) are scattered across the floor. I sit away from him on the springs of a couch without cushions.

Under the glass tabletop next to him is a black-and-white picture of him hiking in the mountains with a walking stick in one hand, a pipe in the other. In the photograph, he is carrying a backpack and is half-turned toward the camera; in the photo, sunlight glamorizes his face. (The High Sierras: mountains of such magic importance to my childhood as to be commensurate with aboriginal promises of beauty and peace; jagged pinnacles far, far away, but so omnipresently in the mind.)

I open the window shade. Outside, to my surprise, it's twilight. The wind snaps twigs off the tree limbs. The snowdrifts are higher now.

Is the walkway clear? he asks.

The walkway from the porch to the driveway to the street is two feet deep in snow.

No, Father, I say. Why?

I'm expecting a letter, he says. (Implicitly, a letter from me.) Will you shovel the walkway?

I dig into the snowdrifts on either side of me. The weight of the shovel and a sudden gust of wind nearly make me fall. He stands behind the screen door, wearing a jacket so big he could use it as a sleeping bag. The pockets are at his knees and the hood is puffed out, framing his face—a skinny Jewish Eskimo.

I hit the blade against the ice, but it's frozen solid. He steps down off the porch, shuffling his feet until we get to the road, which is nearly a foot deep in snow. We trudge toward the post office at the end of the block. Frail as an old-age-home denizen, he holds on to my shoulder to prevent himself from falling.

The post office is an old brick building. Its cement steps are covered with snow, and its wooden door is halfway off its hinges. Inside are benches, a warped floor, and a couple hundred post office boxes: rose-colored glass rectangles with black numbers.

He takes off his coat and uses it as a pillow, kneeling on the floor and turning the dials of a box, rattling it until it opens. He beats his right hand against the sides.

The letter's been held up, he says, again. (I've failed, again.)

Outside, the sky is blankly black, the color of my gloves. Too cold to move, he clings to my arm. Ice gathers on his hood, forming a comical cap. He stops to cough, closing his eyes and breathing heavily. The return trip is always an exceedingly brief flash-forward. And there the dream ends.

Paradise, Soon Lost

Natalie celebrated her 10th birthday with 12 of her closest friends at Skate King, where the lights are low, the mirror ball glitters, the music crescendos every 30 seconds, and the bathrooms are labeled
Kings
and
Queens.
The girls, wearing rollerblades, seemed preternaturally tall, as if they were wearing high heels. My father had come up to Seattle from the Bay Area in honor of Natalie's big day, and at the party he mentioned to me that Natalie looked a little plump, her belly edging over her waistband; I asked him if he ever gave it a rest.

Several of Natalie's friends bought Best Friends split necklaces: one girl wears one half while her best friend wears the other. There was quite a competition for certain girls. Natalie's best friend, Amanda, asked the DJ to play a Michelle Branch song, and when it came on, Amanda beamed.

Seeing the lights go off, all of the younger girls rushed onto the rink. They liked the dark setting, which made them feel less noticeable, and yet Natalie and several of her friends were wearing orange glow sticks. So they didn't want their bodies to be noticed, but they did want their bodies to be noticed. This, I want to say, is the crux of the matter.

The girls skated backward. Then they skated in the regular direction. After a while they did the limbo. The DJ played the standards: “I Will Survive,” “Gloria,” “YMCA,” “Stayin' Alive,” Madonna, the Black Eyed Peas, Avril Lavigne, Usher. Some of Natalie's friends bought plastic roses for themselves. Two teenaged kids were feverishly making out in a far corner. Duly noted by my father, who informed the management—quickly remedied. A quirky Puritanism: his abhorrence of any public display of affection. Whenever Laurie and I go to a movie with him, if I put my arm around her or hold her hand, he inevitably—and unconsciously, I think—erupts into a coughing fit until the PDA ceases.

As the father of a daughter who remains a Skate King devotee, I find the place utterly terrifying. It's all about amplifying kids' sense of themselves as magical creatures and converting this feeling into sexual yearning—a group march toward future prospects. For Natalie and her friends, still, just barely, the purpose of Skate King is to dream about the opposite sex without having to take these romantic feelings seriously, let alone act on them. In the dark, Natalie held Amanda's hand and lipsynched to Aaron Carter.

The last song of the afternoon was “The Hokey Pokey,” which, the DJ explained to me, “adults don't care for.” Of course adults (with the exception of my father, who wanted to join in until Natalie frantically waved him off) don't care for it; you wind up having to put your whole body in. What—Natalie and her friends were wondering—could that possibly consist of?

         

Girls develop breast buds between 8 and 10 years old, and full breasts between ages 12 and 18. Girls get their first pubic hair and armpit hair between ages 9 and 12, and they develop adult patterns of this hair between ages 13 and 14. I once heard statutory rape defended by the phrase “If there's grass on the field, play ball.” In 1830, girls typically got their first period when they were 17. Thanks to improvements in nutrition, general health, and living conditions, the standard age in America is now 12 (12.75 in the 1960s, 12.5 in the early 1990s, and 12.3 early in this decade). Girls are getting fatter, which also helps trigger menstruation.

The average menstrual cycle is a little over 29 days. The moon's cycle of phases is 29.53 days. According to Darwin, menstruation is linked to the moon's influence on tidal rhythms, a legacy of our origin in the sea. For lemurs, estrus and sex tend to occur when there's a full moon.

At age 9 or 10, a boy's scrotum and testicles enlarge and his penis lengthens; at age 17, his penis has adult size and shape. Boys' pubic hair, armpit hair, leg hair, chest hair, and facial hair start at age 12, with adult patterns of the hair emerging at 15. First ejaculation usually occurs at age 12 or 13; at 14, most boys have a wet dream once every two weeks. I've forgotten the names of nearly everyone I went to junior high school with, but I'll never forget Pam Glinden or Joanne Liebes—best friends, bad girls, reputed “drug addicts”—to whose yearbook photos I masturbated throughout eighth grade. At the time, this activity seemed magical, private, perverse, unique, all-important. It wasn't. It was blood flowing through me which, at some point in the not entirely unforeseeable future (18,000 days, say, at the outside), will no longer flow. My dad will be dead soon; one day I'll be dead; despite—or perhaps because of—all the data gathered in this book, I still find those two facts overwhelming.

“The difference between sex and death,” explains Woody Allen, “is that with death you can do it alone and no one's going to make fun of you.”

Boys are heavier and taller than girls because they have a longer overall growth period. The growth spurt in boys occurs between 13 and 16; a gain of four inches can be expected in the peak year. For girls, the growth spurt begins at 11, may reach three inches in the peak year, and is almost completed by 14. At 18, three-quarters of an inch of growth remains for boys and slightly less for girls, for whom growth is 99 percent complete. Between ages 15 and 18, I grew from 5'4" to 6'1"; I still visualize myself being small. Natalie, shorter than most of her classmates, is mad at me for not having my growth spurt until the end of high school. She can't wait to “stretch out.”

         

When Natalie was 2, Laurie and I were putting on Natalie's clothes to take her to day care. My father was visiting for the week. Natalie cried frantically, complaining that the clothes were the wrong clothes—this was the wrong color, that was too tight. She kept saying, “Mine, mine, mine.” Afterward, I asked my dad what he thought Natalie was trying to tell us, and he said, “She meant, ‘These limbs, these legs, these arms: they're mine. Don't do this to my body. It's my body.'” I asked him if I ever did stuff like that as a kid, and he said, “Are you kidding? You drove me and your mother up a wall, especially that first year. What a crybaby!”