The Man Who Lived My Life
Prologue
For almost two years, I lived in the airport hangar, first with Tao, then Maxi. We didn’t live in the actual hangar; we lived in the office attached to the hangar. The twenty by thirty square-foot-space with the painted cement floor, cracked plaster walls, two multi-paned windows facing east and two facing north, and a closet commode. After I realized that Tao and I were destined to spend more than a few nights there, I ventured down to Walmart, a place in which I vowed never to step foot, and purchased a queen-sized air mattress. The mattress took up most of the floor, and Tao, a particularly large German shepherd, took up most of the mattress. During the night, his poorly manicured nails punctured little holes in the fabric. I woke to the incessant Tucson sun shining through the dusty, time-glazed glass windows and an intractable hardness beneath me. I bought some repair adhesive at the local sporting store and had to read through the unintelligible instructions several times. As one week turned into two, three, four weeks, and weeks leached into months, I started ordering large quantities of the adhesive online. Finally, I had to invest in a new air mattress. By then, the Walmart greeters knew me. And to think, for over two decades I had been a respected, practicing, board-certified neurosurgeon and even owned a hospital.
One thing the hangar taught me is the power of bare walls. They decimate all vestiges of well-being. They are the reason prison inmates hang posters and sometimes themselves. When an email advertising a sale on photos landed in my inbox, I quickly ordered an enlarged canvas photo of my three children. It so brightened the space that I decided to stretch my Social Security income and order a second one. My favorite always will be the photo of my daughter Elyse at ten years old, flanked by my sons, five-year-old Michael and baby Josh. It was taken when they still smiled at me every day. The other photo was of the three of them at Elyse’s wedding, an event I did not attend because I was not invited.
Living in the hangar was terribly frustrating. No, I take that back. It was horribly, gut-wrenchingly frustrating and lonely. The photos alleviated only a modicum of the loneliness and sometimes heightened it. I finally concluded that I could either wallow in melancholia or participate in life in a new way. For the first time since moving to Tucson thirty years earlier, I made an effort to meet my neighbors. When I was a neurosurgeon, I was busy removing brain tumors, repairing spines, designing and testing robotic neurosurgical lasers, serving as a medical expert, doing charity medical work, and keeping up with car clubs and most importantly, interacting with my immediate and extended family. Who had time to become acquainted with neighbors? I’d arrive late to neighborhood parties, drink a Coke, kibbitz with a few folks, then leave. I’d wave to people walking through the neighborhoods or working in their yards, but if I encountered them in the supermarket or at the gas pump, I most likely didn’t recognize them. But Tao and I, well, we had plenty of hours and days get to know folks in the airpark, to listen to their stories of what was and what might have been, and reciprocate in kind.
I was supposed to move to Israel, not to La Cholla Airpark. I’ve been trying to become a permanent resident of Israel since 1967 when I first visited the Holy Land and felt compelled to volunteer for the Israeli Defense Forces. At the time, my relatives in Israel convinced me to return to the States and complete my undergraduate education at the University of Chicago. Better to earn a degree that I could offer Israel, they said, rather than take from Israel. I reluctantly returned to Chicago with the dream of making Aliyah and later becoming a research scientist at the world-renowned Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. Of course, that never happened, though during my medical career, I did collaborate with Israeli scientists at LASER Industries, Ltd. in Tel Aviv to develop a microslad used during laser surgeries. It was cutting edge technology, the first of its kind in the world.
Forty-five years after my first visit, I thought I was Israel-bound for good. I had everything in place. I no longer owned any of my residences. Three Gorillas Moving and Storage Company was scheduled to pack my belongings, transport everything fifteen miles to the hangar, and unload. I had earmarked the boxes that needed to be shipped to Israel. I instructed Michael and Josh to take what items they wanted from the hangar and dispose of the rest, either by distributing to relatives or donating to charity. I emailed Elyse and told her that the concert grand player piano was hers, as well as anything else she wished to have. I watched Three Gorillas load my belongings onto their semi-trailers. I took off before them and drove to the hangar where I proceeded to wait and wait and wait. Nothing arrived. Not one box. Not my Ferrari or other cars that I had watched being carefully flat bedded. Not my Judaica. Not my family memorabilia. Fifty years and over four million dollars of accumulated belongings vanished. All I had in my possession were the clothes on my back, Tao, my laptop, cell phone, daily prayer book and tallit, and the old family Suburban.