When I was growing up in New Jersey, I had a crush on a family--the entire family--who lived in our neighborhood: Arnold, Shirley, Harvey, Eddie and Joyce Adler. The Adlers were like gods to me. Every spare moment, when I wasn't playing field hockey or practicing piano or doing homework, I got on my bike and rode circles around their house, hoping someone would notice and invite me in. The kids were a lot older than I was. The year I was fifteen, Harvey graduated from medical school in New York. Eddie was in medical school in Philadelphia, and Joyce was a freshman at the University of Vermont.
The Adlers were beautiful and bright and happy. Their home always seemed lit from within, not only by glowing lamps and a steady hum of activity, but by something I couldn't have put my finger on at the time. To me, they seemed blessed. Life in the Adler household was in sharp contrast to the tension and loneliness I felt with my own parents--but that wasn't it. The reason for my infatuation with that family was their certainty, their absolute conviction that they lived in a world designed to please and reward them. They would always have whatever they wanted. Life would continue as planned: they were charmed, gifted, golden, and admission to their inner circle meant that some of that charm might rub off on me.
Each winter, the family spent their Christmas vacation on the Caribbean island of Antigua. They stayed at the same hotel, played tennis with the same pro, ordered the same frozen drinks on the beach. Once, I asked them if they were planning to go to Antigua that year. The oldest son, Harvey, answered this way: Does the sun rise in the east and set in the west?
This might, in retrospect, appear to be hubris, but really it was a form of innocence. Nothing bad had ever happened to any of the Adlers. It was an elegant, if flawed, bit of logic to proceed from there to the certitude that nothing ever would.
But then, after their annual Caribbean holiday--from which they returned tanned and languid--Joyce went back to college and suffered a massive stroke, from which she never recovered. In the blink of an eye, she became paralyzed and mute, trapped inside her own body. It was an inexplicable, freak occurrence. She spent the rest of her life--I recently heard that she passed away in her forties--living at home with her parents. The basket of sports equipment next to the garage doors disappeared forever. The family closed ranks. For the rest of my teenage years, I continued to circle the house on my bicycle whenever I could, but never again was I invited inside.
It has been many years since I've heard word of the Adlers. My parents moved away from the New Jersey suburb where we all lived. But their story is embedded somewhere within me, a samskara. Had they been foolish to believe in their own good fortune for all that time--to trust that all would be well? They weren't religious people, but they had a kind of blind faith. I, on the other hand, come from a long line of religious people who aren't so sure that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west--much less that their own lives will unfold predictably. I was born and bred to fear the worst. And I know that the worst either happens or it doesn't. Worry is not a form of protection. So who's the fool?
