Got a Feeling 71 is Gonna be a Good Year

..especially if you and me see it in together.

Things I dislike: ‘71 is the new (fill in the blank)’ or ‘Getting old sucks,” or “CRS: Can’t remember shit.’  I dislike birthday cards with a ‘senior’ with a walker, people who pine for the ‘good old days’  or say ‘happy birthday old man.’  Oh, one more: Age is just a number. Wait. I like that one.

I turn 71 tomorrow, having been born in Roslyn Hospital because I wanted to be close to my mother. We lived in Glen Oaks, Queens then moved to Long Island in 1956 where my mother would list our town on letters as Plainview Manor or Plainview Estates, to impress her friends and family back in the boroughs.

What does 71 mean? Huh..Good G-d, Absolutely nothing, say it again!!

We love to travel as you have guessed. When I tell people we’re off to Greenland next week, or Mexico in December, Lisbon and Morocco in February and Nova Scotia next July, people say “ I don’t even know what I’m doing next week.”

Well, we have worked hard for it but there’s an underlying reason. Did you ever notice when someone is older and ill and they have a grandchild’s graduation coming up in a year, or a wedding, bar mitzvah, or communion, they somehow stay around and make it to the milestone, then sadly, pass away after? It is because when you have something to look ahead to, you do what you can within your limits, to experience that joy.

I have a very fit wife who makes feeling good her mantra, working out two hours every day, even jumping in the Antarctic Ocean. Me? I walk the airport, five miles per shift. Kinda the same, right?

Sure, I’ve had ups and down. No secret there. Sciatica two months, now gone with PT and FEELING as fit as a fiddle, and sometimes struggling with LOOKING like a BASS fiddle.

Then again, what is 71? Lee and Lenny Kluger were playing tennis three times a week, drinking martinis. At 60, my mom went to live in Israel for a month, working on a kibbutz. My brother Alan travels every chance he gets. That’s how we were raised. TO live, in the face of adversity and though we have had some that would challenge many, we march on.

I am reminded of an old Regis & Kathy show where Val Kilmer said he lived on a ranch in the desert in New Mexico. Regis told Val: “I could never do that,” to which Kilmer replied: “No, Regis. I don’t think you could.”

But all of us can push our boundaries and make plans, whether it’s a five-hour ride to a place we’ve never been, learning how to cook, fixing irrigation in the yard, still going bowling and realizing that in this crazy world, we learned compassion and civility and it evens us out.

No one ever said on their death bed, I wished I spent more time at the office.

Hope tells me: “you can’t regret doing something. You can only regret NOT doing something! (OK, one night in October, 1972 is one I regret!)

I will end this boring missive with my eulogy for my mom. She lived a life without fear and that is how I plan to live mine. And whatever a higher being may have in store for me..BRING IT!

Boy..did I pick a lousy day to stop drinking.

My mom was 80 years old.Never needed glasses..she drank straight from the bottle.

Go ahead..Laugh..Our house was always about laughing..at ourselves and yeah..sometimes at others.  But I suspect we were like many families..and like those of you sitting here today.

Do you remember the Robbins Vaccine? How about the famous Kroll Game Company? Do you recall someone yelling "Give Him Safar" when someone stopped breathing?

Probably not. Dr. Frederick Robbins found a way to cultivate the polio virus in a tissue culture, preceding the development of the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Fred Kroll invented the games Trouble and Hungry Hungry Hippos for the Kohner and Hasbro companies. Dr. Peter Safar combined mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with closed-chest cardiac compression that came to be known as CPR.

and while they were not very well known, they left legacies behind.

How does one measure a year in a life? According to the Broadway hit Rent, it's 525,600 minutes and can be measured in daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.

This is a fan letter of sorts to my mom. She didn’t invent a vaccine, a board game or beat on my chest..well, she did just a few times but if I had waited to note her contribution until we all read it in a paper, I would have done a disservice to her and I myself, depriving ourselves of a most wonderful thing: reaching out and touching someone when they were alive, when they were around to hear our words. And I did my best to remind her and myself every week.

My success as a person is due to nurture. Not in that coddling, "let me make that decision for you" kind of parenting, but, rather, "let me give you the tools to succeed or fail," and if you stumble, I am here to provide a compass, not an excuse or a get-out-of-jail-free card.

In the Wizard of Oz, the Wizard tells the Tin Man a heart is not measured by how much you love, but how much you are loved by others. Look at this place.and you know, she’s taking attendance!

Every conversation with my mother began..hi..it’s me..hang on.i got a call…hello??   no mom..it’s me..     oh..ok..hang on..  click.click  .hello?   .yeah mom..it’s still me..ok,honey.one sec..click..i think I lost Terry..Terry???..NO mom..it’s still Barry……ok…I never figured out how this fricking thing worked.

Last week, I was talking to my mom and she asked if I was calling from my car because she hates when I talk on the phone while driving.i said..geez.you’re a pain in the ass. She said.. I’m still your mother….I said.. I’m 52..she paused and said..you’re 52?? gee. I must be older than I thought!

She loved her cigarettes almost as much as she loved all of us here today!! I was sure the Marlboro Man was my real father.

My house was full of laughs.. love and as most of you, a lot of antique crap and lladros. The Metropolitan Museum couldn’t hold a candle to The Lee Kluger Collection.

They say part of life is death. I guess I am tired of taking out my black suit…for my dad, for my mom and for my daughter, Erica.

I am tired of missing Artie, George, Mack, Hank, Henry, Ida, Phil, Hilda, Izzie, and everyone else.

But That is what they call the lifecycle.. But it doesn’t mean we have to like it. But we do have to live with it and learn from it and grow and love more deeply from it.

John Lennon said “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans” 

But I think Lennon’s songwriting partner Paul McCartney said it best: “”And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”

My mom was real..she spoke the plain truth and she didn’t care what people thought.they knew she was a friend for life. She wasn’t just my mother. she was my best friend.

Carlton Fisk, a major league ball player for more than two decades summed up what he wanted in his life. My mom played tennis,not baseball but the sentiment is the same.

I don't want fifteen minutes of fame.

       I want a life.

       I don't want to be a flash in the pan.

       I want a career.

       I don't want to grab all I can.

       I want to selectively choose the best.

       I don't want to sell a company.

       I want to build one.

       I don't want to date a model.

       O.K., so I do want to date a model.

       Sue me.

       But the rest of my goals are long term.

       The result of day to day determination.

       I stay steady.

       I redefine the word consistency.

       Along the way there will surely be

       moments of brilliance.

       I am, after all, me.

       But the moments will add up to something greater.    

       A record of excellence.

       A plaque in a hall.

       My name on a sandwich.

       A family that's a team.

       I'll never look back with regret.

       I will always believe in the ideal.

       I hope to be remembered, not recalled.

       And I hope to make a difference.

My mom had a life, not a career. She is remembered, not recalled, and boy, did she make a difference.

We got to ride the Lee train..It was a helluva ride. It stopped everywhere. and it picked up passengers along the way.me, you, you, and you.

And Somewhere, the ride continues and I am sure, that if there’s a place you go next, my mom is bumming a smoke, dad is flipping the channels and my Erica is loving her grandma, as she used to say..” oodles and oodles of Chinese noodles.”

We all become better people for those we let touch us and come into our lives. She brought me and all of us, into hers and for that, I will be forever grateful.