The young Filipino instructor allows me and another nonstudent, Bun (pronounced "Boon"), an African nurse, to observe. We sit away from the participants, at the back of the basketball court that has been commandeered for Falling Naturally. Mats cover a large section of the floor, and the centerpiece is an obstacle course made of hard foam. The color scheme is schoolyard-not a pleasure on the eyes. Bun's charge is the friendly white guy with the belly and the tonsure. Mine is my father, and we are both old men: he is seventy-six, and I turned fifty-one a few months ago. Among the reasons that I sit in on this class and on his doctors' visits is to see what could happen to my own body in the not too distant future. Also: Is there anything I can do to prevent it? In other words, I am trying for a different demise. I am my father's only child. My mother has been dead going on thirty years-whatever future ailments await me may have more to do with her than with my father.
That I came back to San Mateo temporarily to live in my childhood home and help care for my father, and that I have not agonized about it-this was a surprise. And that my father had a plan-not only would he pay the rent on my New York City apartment, which I would keep, but he would give me a thousand dollars a month, plus let me use his well-maintained Datsun-was another, greater surprise. I wonder, though: Will I sell the house after my father passes and make a renewed stab at my life as a writer in New York, or will I stay on in San Mateo? That I am considering the latter is a sign of how congenial life here has turned out to be.
Denne historien er fra October 23, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra October 23, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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QUARTET ISLAND
Mendelssohn on Mull celebrates chamber music away from urban pressures.
FIX YOU
The self-help positivity of Coldplay.
ILLUMINATIONS
Suzanne Jackson captures the transformative power of light.
RAT PACK
The classic rodent studies that foretold a nightmarish human future.
ROYAL TREATMENT
The unrivalled omnipresence of Queen Elizabeth IL.
WELL, WELL, WELL
Eating—and not-in the epicenter of hype diets.
NEWARK STATE OF MIND
Mayor Ras Baraka's reasonable radicalism.
DOOM SCROLLING
Social media and the teen-suicide crisis.
THE WORKER REVOLT
Harris and Walz try to stop blue-collar Americans from drifting to Trump.
THE CHIT-CHATBOT
Is talking with a machine a conversation?