I Don’T Know What I’M Doing: A Well-Managed Life

By Alain Haim

A retired radiologist who worked in the field forty years, author Alain Haim suddenly found the inspiration and desire to write. His quest to write led him on an inner adventure.

In I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, he offers a look at his varied life experiences, including ruminations on his day-to-day, routine activities.

From the antics of his apartment tenants, to his travels with his wife, his adult children’s excursions, to ordinary trips to the shopping mall, this memoir chronicles life from the eyes of a retired professional, husband, and father. Haim shares a world of observation about human beings, philosophy, science, music, travel, chess, and the creative act of writing.

Haim, who came to the United States from Bolivia more than forty-six years ago, reflects on a plethora of subjects and ideas that have formed the man he is today. He narrates his unending story in I Don’t Know What I’m Doing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781982205225

Alain Haim

Alain Haim is a retired radiologist who found the inspiration to write. He and his wife, Anna, have two children. He currently lives in Green Brook, New Jersey.

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 Alain Haim.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0521-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0520-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-0522-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018906325

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/11/2018

To

Anna, who gave me inspiration.

To Sara, who gave me encouragement.

To Ben, without whom I couldn’t have written this book.

To Samosa, who gave me unconditional love.

In a crazy way, writing is a lot like any kind of very complex game, like chess, where you have the knowledge as you are composing all the ramifications of each move, of each choice you make.

—Adam Ross

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 Scary Noises Upstairs

Chapter 2 Anita Emails Our Tenant

Chapter 3 Our Tenant’s Version

Chapter 4 Another Message

Chapter 5 A Short Message from Our Tenant’s Neighbor

Chapter 6 A Complaint to the Association

Chapter 7 The Dispute Continues

Chapter 8 A Water Leak in the Neighbor’s Apartment

Chapter 9 Our Tenant Is Aware of the Law

Chapter 10 More Complaints

Chapter 11 Our Tenant Goes to Florida

Chapter 12 Three Weeks of Tranquility

Chapter 13 The Dispute Goes to Court

Chapter 14 A Judge Will Decide

Chapter 15 New Carpeting

Chapter 16 No Complaints

Chapter 17 Plumbing Problems

Chapter 18 Water Keeps Leaking

Chapter 19 Plumbing Problems Continued

Chapter 20 Extensive Damage

Chapter 21 Several Months Later

PREFACE

A while ago, I told Anita, my wife, that I wanted to write about what happened to me. She had said that since I was retired, I could use my time for something besides my daily routine. I usually went to the Bridgewater Mall to walk, read, and drink hot chocolate at Starbucks. Occasionally I visited the library, which was only a couple of blocks from the mall or to the bookstore, a five-minute ride by car. On the way home, I might stop at a Walmart to buy something for the house. The other day, I bought loose-leaf paper and a binder with the idea of writing longhand.

I laughed in conversation with my wife and over the telephone with my daughter in Santa Monica. In between jokes, I told them I was serious about writing. The more I laughed, the less threatening the enterprise became as did the idea of failure. I thought that by taking myself lightly, I could avoid writers’ block; I was aware of many examples of that. After publishing To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee found herself unable to continue her career. She preferred to remain in obscurity since she believed she couldn’t improve on her success. So, my taking a lighter approach would overcome that impediment to writing.

Anita told me I could title my book The Well-Managed Life or perhaps A Well-Managed Life. I thought she was referring to my forty years of work before my retirement during which I never called in sick. On that day, the idea of writing hadn’t crossed my mind, and I answered in jest that the correct title of this imaginary book would be I Don’t Know What I’m Doing and kept on walking to the bedroom.

About thirty years ago, I thought perhaps I should try to write something short and immerse myself in the creative process imitating the style and ideas of writers I was reading. One of them, Argentinean Jorge Luis Borges, had captured my imagination with his unusual short stories and beautiful poetry. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too difficult to achieve something that appeared so simple when I read it; all I had to do was find the right idea.

I always had the greatest respect for writing and writers. I read some time ago that writing is the most creative of the arts, and I instinctively realized that was true. I decided to write a short story to immerse myself in this creativity.

I started something, but I couldn’t go forward with it. What had seemed so simple turned out to be extremely difficult; the simplicity was deceiving. Trying to do something similar was a fool’s errand I couldn’t possibly achieve no matter how much effort I put into it. I decided to give up; I doubted I had the talent it required, but my love and admiration for writing and writers continued unabated. I lovingly read Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and others usually slowly, sentence by sentence, admiring their simplicity as if the world were defined by a single one of those sentences. I broke down the more complex ones into smaller groups of words to capture their meaning.

I invested thirty years of my life reading with fascination Marcel Proust’s deep, engaging, beautiful, and inspiring Remembrance of Things Past, also known as In Search of Lost Time (A la Recherche du Temps Perdue). Its more than 3,000 pages of labyrinthine sentences need to be read slowly to be understood. Somebody said that reading Proust was like reading yourself because of its subjective, hypnotic style. That is probably its main attraction. When I heard that, I was in complete agreement.

I had no reason to know that I would be involved in the most creative of arts until Anita called me to the kitchen to listen to a message a neighbor of our tenant in the rental apartment we owned in Connecticut had left us.

Aaron, listen to this … What are we going to do? she said in a worried tone. I shared some of her apprehension because our tenant was a well-mannered, eighty-one-year-old gentleman, a lawyer by profession. Later, Anita got in touch with him and heard his version of the event. The woman in the apartment below had come banging on his door and had left threatening messages. She scared him to death.

This situation, which continued, worried us and left us anxious about how to resolve it. At some point, I detached myself from what was happening and told Anita that a writer could be inspired to write about this. At that moment, something clicked in me. Could I be that writer?

CHAPTER

1

Scary Noises Upstairs

A few weeks ago, a message came to our phone answering machine.

Yeah, hi.

This message is for Aaron and Anita Haas. I own the unit below yours, and your tenant is becoming a nuisance. I complained to the association.

She described her problem with all the details. Apparently, our tenant’s heavy footsteps annoyed her. She said she would take legal action if necessary. She asked us if we could tell him to be aware somebody was living in the apartment below him.

The message concluded, Thank you! I will be back to you if the situation doesn’t change. Goodbye!

In the following days, my wife got in touch with the manager of the association, the neighbor downstairs, and our tenant to solve or at least improve the situation.

I asked Anita to play back the three messages our tenant’s neighbor had left on our answering machine and the one she had left on Anita’s cell. It occurred to me that each one could go at the beginning of a chapter; I told Anita not to erase them. They were rich, spontaneous, original material and a source of inspiration. I should be grateful to her. She’s the reason I have something to write about, I said. Laughing, Anita agreed.

Meanwhile, we were busy planning some trips. I had always wanted to see the world, but I had only recently given myself permission to do that. What if we go to Washington, DC, for a few days at the end of the month? We could see the city and attend this meeting that’s supposed to take place there, I said.

Let’s do it, Anita wholeheartedly said.

As the first pages of my writing started to take shape, I gained confidence, and my enthusiasm increased. My wife and children provided help and encouragement.

My son said, I think people would enjoy reading this. When I asked him if it was good, he answered, More than good. My daughter was also enthusiastic. She sent a text message: Excellent, Pop. Keep writing.

Of course I liked the praise, but I understood that because they loved me, they would not give me a negative review. I needed an objective opinion; only someone outside my little circle could provide me that. But who? I didn’t know anyone in publishing.

At that time, I received an email from a folk-dancing friend. She said that I shouldn’t miss the upcoming session, that I shouldn’t find an excuse again. The week before, I had fallen asleep while flossing my teeth in bed watching TV. When I woke up, it was too late to go to the class.

Jeanne always wrote her emails in perfect English; I admired her precise, correct writing. I thought she would be ideal to read what I had written. Perhaps she could give me an honest opinion. I wrote to her during the last snowstorm.

Hi Jeanne:

Your English is excellent. Do you have an English major? I bet you would be a good editor. Have you done some editing before? I have a reason for asking.

Take care,

Aaron

Her answer came back the next day.

Hi Aaron:

I was never an English major. As an undergraduate, I was a math and computer science major. My master’s degree is in computer science, but it’s woefully out of date, since I never went back to it after having kids.

However, my father was a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher, and I learned from him that words are important. So, I haven’t done any official editing, but I tend to notice mistakes people make sometimes even in published material. And it often takes me quite a while to compose an email, because I’m constantly editing it!

Most people treat emails very casually, like spoken language, but I can’t seem to do that because they are written, and I was taught that written language is formal. So my emails tend to be a cross between casual spoken language and formal written language.

I hope this answers your question. Why do you ask?

Jeanne

I answered right away.

Hi Jeanne:

I have been writing something, and my family thinks it’s good. However, I need somebody outside my little circle to give me an honest opinion and perhaps some encouragement.

Would you be willing to do it?

And how’s the snow treating you?

Take care,

Aaron

I didn’t get an answer for a week. She usually answered promptly, so I figured she must have been busy or out of town. The next Tuesday was the folk-dance teacher’s ninetieth birthday. She was a wonderful woman who was remarkably healthy and active for her age. She had a vast knowledge of and experience with folk dancing.

Elizabeth, a vegetarian, once told me she had never eaten meat or fish. I found that amazing. That was probably a result of her parents being vegetarian. They owned a hotel in Upstate New York, and that is where she grew up.

My children are vegetarian, but that came after a conversion later in life since Anita and I had no such restrictions. My daughter decided to stop eating meat because she considered killing animals to be cruel. Sometime later, my son became vegetarian. The day after he saw a movie that filmed a meat-processing plant where unusual things were happening, he announced, I’m not eating meat anymore.

Many attended Elizabeth’s birthday party from all over New Jersey, and some came from Pennsylvania. She had made many friends during her long career in folk dancing.

My interest for international folk dancing started about thirty-seven years previously. One day when Anita and I went to swim at a community center in West Orange, we heard music coming from one of the rooms. We approached the door and saw people dancing in a big circle to an Eastern European melody with carefully choreographed steps.

Anita said, I’d like to do that.

We started going every Monday, and we became familiar with the melodies and the specific choreography for each dance until it became a habit.

My appreciation for the dancing increased over the months. My feet responded to the challenge, and it was excellent exercise. A few notes of melody corresponded to specific body movements in a carefully choreographed dance. The pleasure of listening to the music was augmented by the steps that put me in a sort of hypnotic trance. I fell into a level of awareness different from ordinary consciousness.

International folk dancing doesn’t require a partner since it is usually done in a circle with many participants. After thirty-seven years at it, my mind and body have become adept at sometimes complicated choreographic movements. However, with the passing of time, doing vigorous turns has become challenging, and I prefer to skip them since they don’t change the rhythm of the dance.

At the party, I saw Jeanne busy arranging the food, including vegetarian dishes. After she finished, she told me why she hadn’t responded to my email.

I’ve been very busy these days, she said. She told me her sick mother needed her attention. I’m interested in your writing, but I just don’t have time to devote to it. That’s why I didn’t answer you right away. I wanted to explain it to you personally.

I’m sorry your mother is sick, I said. Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to do anything. Just read it if you can.

What’s it about? she asked.

I hesitated and then replied, Well, about real life.

Fiction?

No, more like personal experiences.

Somebody else joined the conversation, and we changed topics. We kept mingling with other people, dancing, and tasting the vegetarian dishes.

Later, I told Jeanne that I couldn’t bring my papers the next day because I was going to Washington, DC. However, I told her that in two weeks, they would be ready for her to look at them.

The next morning as I was shaving, I remembered that Anita was acquainted with an editor who worked for a big publishing company.

Hey, I said with my face full of shaving cream, do you remember your friend who works for that publishing company in New York?

She didn’t know right away whom I was talking about, but after a while, she said, Ah yes, Debbie. Why?

She’s an editor.

Oh, okay, she said cautiously. And you’d pay her?

Of course.

That evening at dinner, I said in jest, I think I know how to bribe Debbie. If we tell her she’ll be mentioned in the book, she’ll be more amenable to taking a look at it.

She’s a Frisbee mom you know, my wife said in the same light tone.

Ah! A Frisbee mom, I said with a genuinely interested tone.

Anita broke out laughing.

Our son, Benny, was a Frisbee coach and had worked closely with her son. But of course, we were not really thinking of using that route. Benjamin has been playing and coaching ultimate Frisbee for many years. He started when he was attending Columbia High School in Maplewood. He continued playing as well as coaching in college and to a lesser degree in law school.

The game of ultimate Frisbee was actually invented by a group of students from Columbia High. They used to play in a parking lot near the school. There is a bronze plaque over a large rock in the corner of the lot acknowledging this fact. They played pickup games every Friday night, and on Thanksgivings, students there played a team of alumni. Ben had been very active in organizing ultimate Frisbee at the school and was the coach for many years. He led the team to the New Jersey state championship several years in a row.

CHAPTER

2

Anita Emails Our Tenant

Anita sent an email to our tenant.

I am sorry to bother you, however, the neighbor below you is upset. She cannot sleep because there is noise when you walk at night.

I cannot understand it since there is carpeting on the floor. However, could you possibly be more aware of this? Thank you.

Anita

I was less anxious about resolving this problem because I had time to think. It was then that I decided to write about it.

Anita said, We’ve had him as a tenant for more than a year, and she hasn’t complained before. Why’s she upset now? It doesn’t make sense!

Maybe something’s wrong with her, I said. Do you know if she has any family?

Who knows?

What about the other neighbors?

I have no idea. I could ask our previous tenant.

Later, she sent him a text message.

Hi, I am sorry to bother you. This is Anita. The neighbor who lives below the unit is complaining about my tenant. That he makes a lot of noise when he walks. She cannot stand it. She has become very belligerent and calls us to tell him to stop and is using foul language. Have you had any issues with her? I hope she doesn’t become violent. Any ideas?

His answer came a few hours later.

Hi Anita. She lived below us the entire time and never complained once. Sorry to hear about the issue. Hopefully, there is a way to resolve. Maybe more carpeting/rugs.

That message left us more puzzled about her state of mind. What could possibly have triggered all that? Also, it was possible that our tenant really did tread heavily.

Meanwhile, we were planning our trip to Washington, DC. Anita wanted to drive there. I’ve done it before when I went to protest against the Iran deal, she said.

But it is hard on the bones, and we’ll have to look for bathrooms on the road.

No problem, she said. We’ll stop often and take as much time as necessary.

I don’t think I can take it. Let’s go by train instead, I protested imploringly.

In the end, we decided to take the Acela Express. The trip was only two hours and fifteen minutes and promised to be comfortable. Moreover, I made the decision to go in the first-class wagon for additional comfort. The seats were wide and pleasant, and we would get a meal as well as good service.

It will be nice, I’d told my wife. I hadn’t planned to write all these details about our trip, but one night while turning in bed