When financial problems are of no consequence, paradoxically stress happens because of the lack of it.

I remember many years ago going into the ramp of the Granville Street Bridge with John Armstrong on the passenger seat of my Maserati. I told him, “When this car runs it does so well.” And borrowing from my friend Sean Rossiter I stepped the gas to the floor “to clean the sparkplugs”. Five blocks later I began to hear transmission noises.

I call this Roman Catholic Guilt. When things are going well something is going to go wrong to show you what the real face of life is.

And so these days with the annoying pattern of people of my age rapidly disappearing from the act of pumping blood into their body, I have a virtually stress-free existence. Time zips by and my favourite expression to Rosemary around 6 PM when we are about to watch Rachel Maddow is, “It seems that five minutes ago it was yesterday.” There is no Robert Heinlein The Day After Tomorrow in this. It seems visceral and to use that 20th century term, “existential”. 

It is Christmas time. The days are dark and rainy and I tend to want to stay in bed with my cats and with Rosemary. I reflect on the past year and of all my friends who are gone or disappeared when they junked their land line. But most of all I think of my family and when I see my daughters and granddaughters I see them as they were then, that rosy past that is my bygone in my memory.