Healthcanc

We're not likely to get that short (1)      Looking up   The other day we were standing in stocking feet and I asked FD, “Am I getting shorter?  And what happens when do you get shorter? Do you lose weight?” He faced me and said, with certainty, his head inches from mine, “Yes, you are getting shorter. We all get shorter.”  He didn’t respond to the weight question. And I noticed, as he said this, that he had lost some height, and that my chin didn’t point up as high as usual as we spoke, and our eyes weren’t level, but they were almost level. It was alarmingly intimate. (2)     Holidays and guilt   FD waking me up with the shofar It has happened many times. I’ll be listening to a patient who will suddenly look directly at me, across that perfectly calculated space between us, and declare: “It’s Catholic guilt. The problem is Catholic guilt.” There will be a pregnant pause, then a bold continuation: “You Jews have it too, I think. The guilt.”...