People try to “live in the moment” without realizing what that really means. Living in the moment is fine if, at the moment, you are hiking in the Colorado Rockies, pausing to sip cool water and admire the vista.
But how often are you living in that moment?
My father, Robert Steinberg, 91, lives in what I call “the immediate moment.” Whatever is happening right now is all there is or can be.
There is no past — his 30 years as a nuclear physicist at NASA have vanished.
There is no future. He has no volition. There is nothing he wants to do. He won’t be attending my older son’s wedding next month — the crowd would confuse and frighten him.
There really isn’t much of a present, either. A sofa. A television. And if I’m there too, I also exist, for the moment.
“How’s the world treating you, Neil?” he’ll ask, and I’ll tell him. It’s the only thing he says to me, those exact words. Over and over. I think of those cheap little music boxes, with a cylinder plucking metal tines. Turn the tiny crank and a dozen notes of “Pop Goes the Weasel” tinkle out: ba-dump ba-dump, ba-daddidy dump …
No shame in that. Just nature taking her course. But to not recognize what has happened would be irresponsible. My father holds patents in nuclear reactor design, but I would not ask him to design a nuclear reactor now, nor would I want to live near one he had worked on recently.
At some point, responsible parties must close the door. Three years ago, my father was driving the car, despite my telling my mother, repeatedly, “He’s going to kill a child in a crosswalk and it’s going to be your fault.” When we moved them to Belmont Village Senior Living in Buffalo Grove, we sold their car.
Should someone have taken the keys away from Joe Biden? It sure felt that way Thursday night. He didn’t even have to speak. Just the stricken look on his face. This wasn’t the same Biden who gave the State of the Union address in March.
“Trump is going to win,” I told my wife.
The next day, social media vibrated with calls for Biden to step down. Tap Pete Buttigieg. Or someone else. It seemed the only solution.
“Let them get another candidate,” my 88-year-old mother said.
I was surprised at how terrible I didn’t feel. Just the opposite. Almost a serenity, an odd lightness. Focus on the task at hand. Get through today. I’ve trained myself to do that. Biden put on a strong campaign showing Friday in North Carolina. He hasn’t stepped down and probably won’t. Wishing it were otherwise won’t change anything. If my wishes mattered, Gretchen Whitmer would be running against Mitt Romney this fall.
Sometimes I say, “That’s not my father; it’s just the box my father came in.” The outer package. The man he once was inside is gone. I still treat him as if he were there, because of what he represents. My father. The man who wrapped me in a blanket and rushed me to the hospital when I was 3 and had a case of croup. Who brought home a laser from work. You have to respect that history. The idea he represents doesn’t fade. To say he isn’t at top form anymore and then abandon him would be vile.
That holds for Biden. His enemies will try to define him by his worst hour. But why not learn from their example? If tens of millions of Americans can pretend Donald Trump is Jesus, Lord and Savior, then I can act like Joe Biden has the most vital constitution in America. If 34 felony convictions didn’t make support for Trump flicker — it got stronger — then Biden having a terrible night on live TV can be treated with shock, a dropped jaw, a horrified day after and then a return to the fight. The stakes are too high to do otherwise.
The election isn’t about Biden, the man, but what he represents — decency, honesty, compassion, democracy. The odds don’t look good right now. That’s OK. Even if it’s a lost battle, that doesn’t mean you stop fighting. I know exactly how my father’s story is going to end. Not in triumph, but defeat. No ruffle of the hair, no exchange of smiles. No “Thank you, son.” The sand will run through the hourglass one day and be suddenly, irrevocably gone. So be it. Belief in an idea doesn’t depend on how perky the representative of that idea happens to be at the moment. Faith comes from within. “We’re not doing it for him,” I keep telling my brother. “We’re doing it for us.”