Dear Dr. Joan Cusack Handler,
While it wasn’t intentional, I have spent the last four years obsessing over ethics. Some — namely, my therapist — might chalk this up to being a break from Christianity, a search for morality in a world I separate from the divine. Some might say it’s from a deep-seated Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I’m sure they’d be right about both.
I’m interested in two questions you posit in Lights in Cold Rooms, namely, “Does an aging person stop growing?” and “At what age do we become disposable?”
I hope that I never stop growing. I want to be in my eighties — if I should be so lucky — and consider dyeing my hair a shade of chartreuse that my neighbors gawk at. I want to consider new viewpoints and ideas without becoming set in my ways.
About a conversation with your father regarding the reversal of his decision not to attend your son’s Bar Mitzvah, you write the following about his flexibility, “It was a stunning moment in the history of our family. A victory for love, for David’s ability to speak up about what was most important to him, and for Dad’s pursuit of a more flexible, modern priest.”
As extended family members grow older, it becomes more difficult for me to acknowledge their rigidity; a man in his seventies who actively votes against his own healthcare and a millennial who joins a school board to push alt-right talking points that have been disproven over and over again make it hard to find excitement in family get-togethers. Still, I want to advocate for flexibility, for a new, “modern,” as you say, way of looking at things.
I want to grow kinder, more considerate as I age, and I would like to be seen as a valuable part of my community, even when I am no longer of service to the workforce. I would hope that as I change, grow, and progress, the duty of care I uphold in my relationships with other people will not only allow the security of a cushion to fall back on, but also a more supportive community at large.
I am touched by your father’s growth. Touched by the healing and progress you write yourself experiencing in Lights in Cold Rooms. I hope that my ethics fixation allows me to keep growing. I hope it encourages me to treat my elders with care; we are all human, after all.
I believe it does.
Very sincerely,
Carlin Steere
