There’s a lot of confessing, challenging, a bit of conflict, and a touch of cussing.
But most of all it’s a conversation between friends.
This project grew out of years of relationship and talking about our ventures and missteps and learnings and stories.
And we want to share them with you.
This podcast is a series of conversations about life, entrepreneurship, money, wellness.
But, really, it’s about improving our lives in midlife.
My friend’s name is Howard Lerner. He’s a great dude and entrepreneur and conversationalist. If you’re from St. Louis, you’ve likely heard of Kaldis Coffee. He started that company. After building it, he sold it.
Join us every week, as we put out a weekly episode. Here’s the latest one entitled Finding Midlife Motivation.
Feel free to ask us questions or give us topics you want to hear us discuss. And we welcome any feedback you might have. Contact me through this site or @itsjohnpa on Twitter or Instagram.
Everyone, lastly, I just want to thank you for joining me on this journey. It’s almost weekly that I get to hear from someone that’s said they read my blog at one point or another, and that always makes me feel honored and grateful to feel connected to you somehow.
I love you. And I wish you the best as we continue this beautiful journey called life.
Lots of love,
John
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Something was going on in China. It was shrouded and strange but scary. People were getting sick, and many were dying, and it was growing at an alarming rate.
I started to suspect that it was already in NYC. “I mean, how could it not be?” I thought. It’s a global city, and the number of people who do business in China and have connections there was numerous.
So the four of us in our family self-quarantined and social-distanced, keeping our kindergartner out of school, even though the school called us to tell we should be sending him there and that he would get unexcused absences. But we didn’t care. We cared more about his life, his health.
Also our second child, our baby, had a cleft palate and lip. The latter was already repaired, and the former was scheduled for surgery on March 18th.
But it didn’t feel right. We felt this urgency, that it was only time before NYC was in a panic.
So we moved up the date. They had the 9th open. And we took it and prayed that nothing would happen to cancel it before then.
We were also planning on moving out of NYC even before the pandemic. But that changed these plans as well. After moving up the surgery, we moved up the move and the closing date for our new home in St. Louis. The latter moved from mid-April to March 20th, and the movers would come to NYC on the 18th.
So everything was changed and set.
And now it was the beginning of March, and all we could do was wait.
The first few cases occurred in NYC. But there wasn’t panic yet. People were still going out. No one was wearing facemasks. Bars were still full, restaurants bustling. The city was still the city.
The 9th finally came. Donning a facemask and latex gloves, I walked an hour with our baby in the stroller, to avoid Ubering, to the hospital. I marched into the hospital, ready to do battle against this invisible enemy. No one else wore a mask.
The surgery was a success, and the doctor let us out early because he saw that we were seriously concerned about this virus.
I walked home that night and was greeted by my wife and firstborn. We were happy and relieved and tired.
The following days my wife and I were busy pumping various painkillers into our baby (since he had the roof of his mouth carved up and put back together) and packing to get ready for the movers.
All the while, the cases were jumping. People started dying. We were worried.
The surgeon wanted us to come in for a postoperative appointment. We tried to get out of it. But he wouldn’t let us.
So on March 16th, I went, wearing another facemask. It was quick and easy. Our baby looked great. But then the doctor told me news that sent shivers down my body.
All elective surgeries were canceled that week by the hospital to get ready for the onslaught of patients from COVID-19.
If we hadn’t move up the date for our surgery, it would have been canceled for some indefinite date.
And even now, as I write this, it looks like we would be waiting a very long time to get rescheduled, and we would have needed to go back to NYC to do it.
Instead, we were on the other side and done and just making sure our screaming baby wasn’t in too much pain while we waited for the movers. They arrived on the morning of the 18th and quickly started moving our things into the truck.
Right after they got there, I went into New Jersey to pick up a Suburban we were renting to drive back to St. Louis. We didn’t want to risk flying.
Riding my bike down to the ferry was wonderful. The air was crisp and the Hudson River was on my right and the city was on my left. But it was already changed. It was quieter, more fearful, less certain.
I was the only person on that ferry during rush-hour.
After picking up the car, I got back into the city quickly since there was very little traffic. People were already working from home.
As the movers were finishing up, I wiped down the whole Suburban and started packing it with all of the stuff we needed for the next couple of days. (It’s amazing what a family of four “needs.”) And we had our 80lbs dog and cat.
Driving through the night while still dosing up our baby with a concoction of Motrin and Tylenol, was interesting. But we made it to St. Louis the next day, the 19th.
After staying a night in an Airbnb that a friend let us use, we were set to close on our new home on the 20th. We requested a mobile notary to bring us the documents to sign for our new home. He did.
The movers were supposed to move us in on the 21st, but they said that they could do it on the 20th. So on that afternoon, after we closed, we were totally moved in and unpacking.
On the 20th, NYC was locked down.
On the 23rd, St. Louis was locked down.
If things were off by a couple of days we could have been trapped in NYC; or worse, we could have been homeless. But things worked out, miraculously.
Sure, I guess we could say, “Wow, we are amazing to have done all of that,” but that would be ridiculous because we had no idea what we were doing. We were like a blind person wandering around NYC for the first time: Lost.
It was a Divine hand that was guiding us. It was God’s grace that held us. We were objects of mercy.
The timing was too perfect to be planned.
Right now, we are comfortably situated in our home working, playing, living. We’re still quarantining and healthy. And as each day passes, we are more grateful.
For those of you who prayed for and thought about us, thank you. We really needed you.
We hope you are well, too, friends.
Lots of love,
John
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It was a beautiful morning in the city, with spring in the air and magic around every corner.
But for me, New York didn’t blossom in my eyes; it was different for us. I was taking our nine-month-old baby in for surgery.
He had a cleft palate (and lip, but that was already repaired). A cleft lip and palate is a birth defect where the child’s face doesn’t fully close up on the upper jaw and lip and nose while in the womb. For birth defects, it is the best kind to have because it’s repairable.
So that seemed manageable—scary—but doable. We could stomach it. But that wasn’t the only issue.
There was another one.
COVID-19.
Our family has taken this very seriously. The two weeks before the surgery, we kept our six-year-old out of school and don’t know when he’ll go back. We canceled all meetings, lunches, get-togethers, everything—except the surgery. The only time we leave the apartment is to take a walk, only outdoors, in the fresh air. We have been on lockdown and, while we are locked in, we wash our hands every five minutes, literally.
So then, on that beautiful morning, I was venturing out with our baby to go to a hospital—A HOSPITAL—where the sick go, which was something major for us. People who are infected might be there. But we thought it best to get the surgery done since the surgeon is one of the best at this repair, so we plunged into the great unknown.
But I was prepared. I had a few face masks, gloves, and a will to get us out of there without getting infected.
When I was there, I was the only one wearing a mask. I was that guy: The weirdo. Being Asian might have made the whole scene that I was look worse, but I carried on. There were a few people who reacted. A nurse asked me if there was a reason why I wore the mask. I said, “There’s a pandemic going on.” And a young kid sneezed and then made an exaggerated sneezing and coughing noise as if to imply my mask was unnecessary. And I got a strange look here or there but, for the most part, it was business as usual.
The staff was kind and courteous and understanding, but there was a feeling that I shouldn’t have been wearing the mask. One nurse even mentioned that there was a shortage of them. (But I kept on thinking about the two countries—Taiwan and Singapore—who have effectively stopped the spread of the virus, and one of the measures they used was getting everyone to use face masks.) Doctors and nurses washed their hands and used hand sanitizer. But no one washed their hands for twenty seconds as the CDC has recommended. (No one; except me; ok, I do it for more like fifteen seconds.) It was odd to have such a prestigious institution as that hospital not be more vigilant and take this more seriously, especially since this unit was only for children.
I asked the nurses and doctors what they thought about the Coronavirus. They said that it was an issue. But it almost sounded more like a nuisance than a real problem.
And they might be right.
But I kept on thinking “What if it’s not just a nuisance? Why not practice more precautions? Why not wash your hands more, for longer, thoroughly? Why not wear face masks? Why not work harder to stop the spread?”
One conversation I had with a nurse concluded on this idea, “We have to live our lives.”
That seems to be the pervasive thought that I see: “I won’t let some stupid virus stop me from living my life.”
And I’ve got to say that I agree with that in most crisis situations. In WWII, the motto, “Keep calm and carry on” is inspiring especially when you think about Londoners keeping their lives going even when the Nazis bombed the hell out of their city. That mindset of never letting fear stop the way we do life is beautiful. That’s courage. That’s good. Don’t live in fear. Hoorah!
But this is different.
Our bodies betray us. Anyone can be a carrier. All the virus needs is a warm body: yours, mine, your buddies. And our common behaviors spread the very thing that hurt our neighbors, friends, parents, people. With each handshake, kiss, cough, sneeze, we can advance illness, and even death, unbeknownst to us, and them.
That’s how this virus works: it’s stealthy. People can be contagious even if they don’t feel bad—or asymptomatic. That means you don’t have to feel like death curled up next to you with some doctor in a hazmat suit hovering over you, laboring to keep you alive, to be infectious. No. You can just feel a little off, or nothing at all, and sneeze and give it to someone else. Just like that.
This virus grows exponentially. One person on average gives it to two. That’s crazy and freaky. So one becomes two, and two becomes four, then eight, and before you know it you have a hockey stick on a chart of people all with the virus. That’s scary.
We should all be scared. Because people die from this. Our parents, friends, loved ones, they can all get it and it can possibly be fatal.
If we don’t stop how we live our lives this virus can stop it for us, for our loved ones.
Eventually I walked our precious son into the unnaturally bright OR to have people cut our son open in order to heal him, but I feared less the knife and more the invisible enemy that was too small to see.
After leaving him there, I waited in the waiting room. There were other parents and families.
I did what I could to fill the time, making some phone calls, praying, and reading with my face mask on, with people looking at me, as they coughed and sneezed around me, as the hair on my neck pricked up, with fear. Dread filled me.
The operation was supposed to take two hours, but it was solidly passed that. I was panicking. You know when you start thinking those irrationally dreadful thoughts? You know, the bad ones, really bad ones. That’s what I was doing.
After two and a half hours the surgeon came out and greeted me with a smile. Relief washed over me. I smiled back. But he couldn’t see it under my face mask. I stood up and he told me my baby was well. I was so grateful.
“They’ll call you back in a bit to see him,” he told me as he held out his soft, supple, well-manicured hand, only the way a world-class surgeon, with seven-figure hands, could. I clasped it. It felt good. It felt bad. And as he walked away, I followed him a few feet away and thrusted my hand under the huge hand sanitizer dispenser that hospitals have everywhere. And a white foamy cloud of liquid gold fell into my palm, with that distinct mechanical dispensing sound that they all make. Then I smeared it all around my hands, covering them over and over, not just removing any danger from them, but also washing away my fears.
After a much longer time than I had expected, they finally welcomed me back. And when I saw him all I wanted to do was hold him and love him and be grateful all was well and hope that he was.
After a few hours they discharged us even though we were supposed to stay the night. Before the surgery I told the doctor my concerns about staying overnight with the virus ramping up. He understood my concerns and put in the order to release us if our baby ate well enough. A baby not feeding is a real worry after they’ve had the roof of their mouth worked over. But he ate. And we were released.
That was kind. Very kind. The doctor took some risk to let us out so that we could have some peace of mind. It was health care at its best, making caring for the patient the protocol, even if he had to break the protocols to do that.
The fact is we don’t know if our baby, or I, have the virus or not. Before I left that morning I told my wife and our six-year-old son not to touch me when I returned: no hugging, kissing, etc.
When I walked back home, they were both up, waiting for us. My firstborn drew a sign out of crayons to welcome us back. I felt loved even though we didn’t touch. We used words to express the feelings we felt to wrap one another with love and cover each other with the affection we carried in our hearts.
We don’t know if we are carrying anything else in our bodies, but we will see.
