My brother’s hair is falling out. It’s the chemo.

“It just looks like a bad haircut,” I said. “Mom would believe that. She knows you’re cheap.”

Steve didn’t want to tell Mom he had cancer.

“I don’t want her to worry.”

“Just wear a hat when you see her next week.”

“I don’t wear hats,” he said. “And she knows when I’m lying.”

At brunch, Steve ordered chilaquiles and a mezcal-infused cinnamon coffee. We chatted about how to tell Mom. I said, “Tell her it’s a neoplasm. That sounds harmless.” When I told Mom that I had open-heart surgery last year, I called it a sternotomy.

“Or I could dodge her for a few months,” he said, which wasn’t a bad idea. We’re both accomplished avoiders. When he and his wife lived in Cleveland, they came to Chicago one weekend for a getaway without telling our parents they were in town. Their hotel caught fire, and the newspaper got a picture of him helping people out. When my parents saw his photo saving lives in the newspaper, they were equal parts proud and pissed off.

Steve told me about his cancer a few weeks before our brunch. He called me while I was in Australia. When I told him, he said, “Never mind, we can talk when you get back.” He never calls unannounced, so I knew something was up. I sat down on the balcony and stared out at the Tasman Sea, moving my glass of rosé to the side.

“What’s up?”

Steve and I don’t chat regularly. He’s seven years older than me. He was in high school when I peed in my pants during my first t-ball game. He was a medical school resident when I was partying my way across Europe.

When we both lived in Chicago fifteen years ago, we’d take Dad out for dinner once a month. We’d order martinis and brag about what we were up to. Dad would beam, saying he was pleased that we were such good brothers, that it meant so much to him to see his boys thrive. During his last few years, he mostly listened to us talk and smiled.

When I found out I had a leaking heart valve last year and needed surgery within a few weeks, Steve was one of the first people I told. I played it down, like it was no big thing. I remember exactly where I was when I called him, outside a hair salon where I was about to get a trim and some camo a few weeks before surgery. I wanted to look my best.

And now, halfway across the world, I was gutted by his news, and grateful that he wanted to tell me.

When we finished brunch we said goodbye and gave each other one of those two-pat man hugs. We’ve been doing those our whole lives. “Talk soon,” he said.

He told Mom about his diagnosis the following week, after he and his wife took her to the Milwaukee art museum. She accepted the news as well as any mother could, hopeful and afraid, stoic and saddened.

Steve and I have only gotten together once since then, at a downtown restaurant. It was early for dinner, and we were the only two in the place. He had trimmed his remaining hair tight, which looked much better. I ordered a smoky Manhattan; he had a mocktail.

I asked him how he was feeling. He asked me the same. We talked about work and the kids for a bit, then he got a work call, which went on longer than expected. Bored, I jotted down some thoughts. Writing about him felt like the right thing to do, but also selfish, like I was turning his pain into material.

We said goodbye on the street, gave each other a quick two-pat hug, but this time held on longer than we needed to.

After we let go, Steve said, “Let’s invite Josh and Adam to join us next time.” His son Josh had just moved back to town, and my son Adam lived nearby. They were a few years apart and hadn’t spent much time together. I said that sounded great, and we headed in opposite directions.

Tonight we were brothers, making up for lost time. Eating, bragging, doing a little work.

Next time, we’d bring the boys.

Who’s someone in your life you’d like to spend more time with?

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(An earlier version of this essay appeared six months ago, before I realized it wasn’t actually about hobbies.)

I used to know who I was.

Then I sold my company.

Now when people ask, “What do you do?” I don’t know what to say.

I can’t say, “I’m retired,” because I’m not. And saying, “I sit on a few boards,” sounds suspiciously retired.

When I tell people I write essays, they smile and say, “Good for you,” the way you’d encourage a child who announces he’s going to be an astronaut.

While writing takes up my work hours, I thought I should take up some new hobbies for my free time in this new chapter of my life. The problem is, I’ve never really had hobbies. I do stuff. I read, play tennis, travel, ride my bike, and drink bourbon. But those aren’t hobbies. They’re just shit I do.

Hobby people are different. They have forums. They attend conventions. They own specialty vests. They casually use words you’ve never heard before and seem disappointed you haven’t. If I took hobbies more seriously, I figured, I could say I was an ornithologist or a philatelist or anything with an “-ist.”

The internet listed more than seven hundred hobbies. I eliminated anything that could get me killed or required actual talent, which cut the list in half. Some sounded appealing, like crocheting, which I misread before deciding it wasn’t for me either. I ended up with three I decided to try: astronomy, infusion, and lomography.

First Stop: The Heavens Themselves

I kicked off my astronomy hobby by getting into a contrived argument with an actual astronomer about the space-watching binoculars he recommended in Astronomy Magazine. I emailed him that I disagreed with his choice, and he surprisingly wrote me back right away, explaining patiently and professionally that I was an idiot. But it was official: I was now an astronomer involved in meaningless scientific debates. I bought the pair of space binoculars he recommended, and they arrived two days later.

On my first night out, I learned that a blue moon isn’t blue, which felt like false advertising. It’s just an extra full moon in a month, which happens rarely, as in “once in a blue moon.” Who knew?

A week later I saw the International Space Station cross the sky, which was legitimately mind-blowing. An app told me exactly when and where to look for it, which seemed like an invasion of its privacy, but was handy for me.

Other things seemed silly. Constellations? What a scam. No group of stars looks like a man-horse archer. Comets? Forget it, you’ll never find them.

Standing alone in the dark looking for planets, I had a thought I didn’t love. I used to be somebody. If someone asked what I did, I had an answer before they finished the question. CEO. Founder. Educator. Those weren’t just jobs. They were shorthand.

Now I was a guy in flip-flops wondering where the hell Saturn went.

Still, there’s pleasure spending an hour outside at night, away from the sounds of everyday life. Looking up, I felt small and insignificant, but alive and in awe.

Want to buy a pair of used binoculars?

Second Stop: Infuse Me!

Next, I tried infusion.

I thought this could be hard because I hate recipes and can’t follow instructions, and infusing tends to have precise steps, measurements, and times. I was uniquely unqualified.

To document my journey toward becoming a person of refined sensibility and precision, I kept a diary:

Entry #1:

Yesterday I bought some small mason jars and tonight I’m sipping a delicious frozen rosemary infused gin. Maybe if astronomy led to an actual space voyage it could compare to infusion. This is a hobby that lets me learn and drink at the same time. I’m an infusionist!

Entry #4:

I made French spice-infused Earl Grey Tea. It’s delicious. Sweet and spicy. It’s like Paris and London had a baby, boiled it and poured it into my mug. I should start an infusion blog.

Entry #7:

This is getting old. Do I really need artichoke-infused gin made with a sous vide? Honestly, I’m getting sick of the flavored alcohol already. I need to find some other kinds of infusions. I’m off to the internet.

Entry #12:
I accidentally ended up on survivalist forums. These infusionists are preparing for the end-times using honey, garlic, and hatred of the federal government.

I’m out.

It was fun while it lasted. I’m glad I tried it.

Anyone want a free set of mason jars with the purchase of some binoculars?

Third Stop: Lomography

Lomography is a creative photography movement that values artistic expression over technical perfection. Blurry and overexposed mistakes are the point. I began by reading a lomography blog while drinking cardamom and ginger-infused vodka that I made while that was still a thing.

One of the best parts of this hobby for me was my camera. It was an Instamatic, so I could see results immediately. Every click delivered a tiny dopamine hit. Like mentoring someone, closing a sale, or teaching a room full of people, you’re rewarded right on the spot.

Driving around town looking for objects to photograph makes you look at everything more artistically. Should I capture this tree from a low angle? Should I shoot my cheese sandwich in black and white? Killing two hobbies with one shot, I took a blurry photo of my daughter standing in front of an orange moon. In fact, I took hundreds of candid photos of my family. Trish never said anything, but I’m sure she looked forward to this phase ending soon.

When I ran my company, I was often the subject of photographs. There were photos of me speaking in town hall meetings, at schools greeting children, giving speeches at conferences. Now I was on the other end, taking shots of others.

To be honest, I’m not sure which I like better, but I’ll hang on to the camera. No one has taken me up on the mason jars or binoculars anyway.

So what do I do?

I look for Saturn.

I infuse things that shouldn’t be infused.

I photograph blurry sandwiches.

I keep becoming.

How do you answer the question, "What do you do?" Has your answer changed over the years?

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Share Accidental Wisdom

Here’s a stupid idea: Post a survey online so your friends can tell you what they think of you, anonymously.

Can you imagine?

Only someone desperate for validation would try that.

Have we met?

The survey idea came to me after a tennis lesson, when I’d mentioned to my coach that I was headed to a disco-themed costume party. I told her that I found a silk shirt with a wide collar, green bell bottoms, and a white belt from a vintage store. I had spent weeks searching for the right look.

My coach smiled and said, “You seem like someone who’d love that.”

I laughed, and we finished the lesson. But I wondered: Why would she say that? Do I look like someone who enjoys costumes? Is there a tell?

I know my mom likes to wear costumes. She did a great Cruella DeVille last Halloween, and years before that, while my father was still alive, she dolled up as a glamorous Miss Piggy. She dressed my father as Kermit that night, which he would never have done on his own. He just wasn’t that kind of guy.

In fact, he hardly ever chose his own clothes, costume or otherwise. In his twenties, the U.S. Army told him what to wear. After that, my mother did. She laid out his clothes during the work week and helped choose what he wore on the weekends.

I didn’t like that about him. It felt like he was giving up his identity. I’m more particular. I enjoy shopping for clothes and choosing my own look.

When I asked my friends in the survey if they thought I was a “costume guy,” some said yes, because I liked to dress up and look my best, but most said no, because “Mark needs to be in control.”

The nerve.

I wanted to call them up and tell them I couldn’t care less about being in control. Fortunately, I caught the irony before I picked up the phone.

For seemingly not caring about what he wore, my dad did teach me one important lesson about clothes. One morning during high school I walked into the kitchen wearing a vintage Budweiser t-shirt.

He asked, “How much is Bud paying you to advertise for them?”

I rolled my eyes. But I’ve avoided logos and branded clothing ever since. My dad might not have had a sense of style, but he had sense.

One winter evening when I was a kid, he told me that a bunch of dads were meeting at a neighborhood park to fill an ice-skating rink. As the two of us trudged down the street to the park, he said, out of the blue, that sometimes he wished he was an Orthodox Jew. My dad was Jewish, but even at that age I knew he wasn’t religious, so I was confused.

“Why?” I asked.

“You get to study and debate all day. And life is more prescribed. Simpler. You don’t have to make so many damned choices.” That didn’t make any sense to my early adolescent ears. I thought that choice meant freedom. I didn’t know what to say, so I changed the subject and said, “Should I go back home and get my skates?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “You think the water is going to come out frozen?”

I didn’t know it then, but he’d recently been diagnosed with colon cancer. I think about that walk differently now. I suspect he’d just found out how little control he had in life and didn’t want to spend what little energy he had deciding what tie to wear.

I can’t say I internalized that one. When I found out I needed emergency open heart surgery, I wanted to plan every detail. The day before surgery, I went to Nordstrom’s to buy the perfect pajamas to wear around the hospital so I wouldn’t look like a patient. I ended up buying some expensive resort-style cabana pajamas. The salesperson checking me out asked, “Going somewhere fun?”

“Absolutely,” I lied.

The damn things still have the price tag on them. Looking like a patient turned out to be the least of my worries. I didn’t remotely have the energy to put them on.

These days, years since my father died and long after my heart surgery, I’ll still spend twenty minutes standing in front of a mirror deciding between two sports jackets, as if it mattered.

My dad would have been long out the door.

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What’s one small thing you try to control when the big things feel out of your hands?

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Standing on a makeshift stage in the elementary school cafeteria, I smelled sour milk and heavy-duty bleach as parents took turns yelling at me about everything I was doing wrong.

“Why do you force our kids to go outside when it’s raining?”

“Your online registration is terrible.”

“You don’t have enough teachers.”

Everybody was angry. And nobody was eating the chocolate chip cookies I’d brought.

Twelve months earlier I’d quit my job and bet my career on an idea: build an afterschool program that kids loved, like camp, but that also delivered real learning, like school.

Friends had invested. Talented people had quit good jobs to join me. If these parents were right, I’d dragged all of them into the biggest mistake of my life. Every person who had said yes to me felt like another person I might disappoint.

It took just three weeks to go from “I did it!” to “What have I done?”

“Your snacks aren’t healthy.”

“I heard that your basketballs weren’t even inflated.”

Earlier that morning I told a buddy who invested, “It’s going well, super smooth,” which I somehow believed at the time. Now I wanted to shout at the parents, “Come on, give me a chance here!”

When I first pitched the program to an investor I knew, he loved the idea, and said, “I know other investors who’d be excited too.”

We spent months trying to reach his fundraising goal, but couldn’t get there, and on a Friday morning nine months before launch, I opened this email:

Given that we haven’t been able to raise enough funds, the other investors and I are all pulling out. You can try to proceed with the idea on a shoestring, or you can shelve it. I would counsel you to shelve it.

I slammed my laptop shut. I paced the room. I opened it back up, wrote angry emails, then deleted them.

At dinner Trish knew something was off. She asked, “What’s up?”

I nodded toward the kids at the table and smiled weakly. When the dishes were in the sink, I told her about the investors pulling out.

“What do we do now?” Trish asked quietly.

“I have no idea.”

She gave me a hug, and I laid my head on her shoulder, completely spent. I went to bed before the kids, probably for the first time since they were born. I slept for twelve hours.

I woke up with a glimpse of an idea. Instead of building the company I’d imagined, I’d build the smallest version that could survive. I called everyone I knew and asked for any amount they could swing, no number too small. Sometimes it felt like groveling. Other times I worried I was overpromising. But by the end of the week I had enough commitments to get the program off the ground.

We planned to open in four elementary schools. Twelve signed up. It never occurred to me to say no.

The first few days of school were a joy. Then something turned.

“Mr. Mark, I’m your new knitting instructor. Why am I in a karate class?”

“Dr. Rothschild, how am I supposed to teach pottery with crayons and jump rope?”

“Um, there’s no children here. Isn’t it Tuesday?”

Standing on the cafeteria stage in my tight and itchy sportscoat, I wanted to explain everything away. The registration software glitches weren’t on our end. The staffing problems were temporary. We’d inflate the basketballs tomorrow—who knew they’d be delivered deflated?

But I didn’t say any of those things. The parents didn’t come to hear my excuses.

I stepped off the stage and reached for a chair. It was one of those tiny chairs meant for first graders. I sat six inches off the ground, my knees up to my chest, while forty parents looked down on me.

“I’m sorry,” I began. “We got off to a terrible start. I took on too many schools before we were ready. Tell me how we can get better and we’ll do it.”

The room got quiet. We looked at each other. A few parents actually looked sorry for me.

“Well, you could start by serving better snacks. Raisins, dried fruit, less chips.”

“Can our children be excused to play when their homework is done?”

“And could you make sure my son brings home his sweatshirt? He always leaves it behind.”

I stayed late into the evening. Some parents said a few nice words to me, quietly, when it was all over. Some even shook my hand.

Over the next week I visited every school. I apologized. I listened. Then we got to work.

A month later I ran into one of the parents who had been furious with me at that first meeting.

“I don’t know why people were so rough on you that night,” she said, standing outside her son’s classroom, popping a few raisins into her mouth. “My son loves it here.”

I thanked her, turned the corner, and found a place to sit.

What’s your Tiny Chair Moment? I’d love to hear about something that changed the way you lead, parent, teach, or listen. Share it in the comments below.

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Trish and I were running late for a workout.

We parked at the top of the hill in front of the health club, and I spotted, way down below, a friend I’d been avoiding. Stopping to chat would have been awkward, and I was already late.

I spotted some hedges off to the side and went there to hide. There was a small opening, large enough for cowards, and I figured I could squeeze through, walk down that side of the hill, and get to the workout, sight unseen. I ducked under, tripped over some vines, and tumbled down the hill, rolling, scraping, gathering speed, and landed flat on my back on the cement sidewalk,

where I stared up at the sky wondering how to get up and still look cool.

I was pretty banged up and a little bloody, but it could have been much worse. I sprang to my feet, brushed myself off, and looked around to see who had noticed. A worker passing by looked me up and down and asked, “should I call security?” I didn’t know if he wanted to help me or remove me from the premises.

I went to the workout and pretended I was fine.

I said to Trish later, “My lesson for the day is not to take shortcuts.”

She looked at me and said, “That’s not the lesson.”

“What do you mean?”

She just shook her head.

Okay, I get it. I shouldn’t avoid things. But I’m terrific at it. I can get out of almost anything.

In graduate school, an earnest classmate named Saul kept asking me out for lunch. He had the goal of meeting every student from our class outside of school at least once. Over the course of a year, I had the flu, shingles, gout, visiting relatives, a juice cleanse, and once, mysteriously, “a neck thing.”

Eventually, he stopped asking. Avoidance works.

I come from a long line of avoiders. Growing up, my parents, brother and I avoided all public displays of affection. Private ones too. We weren’t big on expressing our fears either, which helps explain why I was comfortable not telling my mother about my open-heart surgery last year until two days afterward.

My surgery was set for a Tuesday morning, and the following Sunday was her 90th birthday party, which she had planned on her own to avoid telling my brother and me that she didn’t trust us to help. She said, “I just know what people want, sweetie.”

I knew how important the party was to her, but there was no way I could attend five days after surgery. But if I told her about the operation in advance, she’d worry. And maybe cancel it. I wanted to avoid that.

Plus, once your mother knows about something, it becomes real.

I hardly told anyone about the upcoming surgery, which is exhausting in its own way. I was having a conversation about a new restaurant with a friend and wondering: Should I tell her I’m getting heart surgery next week? That I might die before I eat the stuffed artichokes she’s raving about?

If I didn’t talk about it, I could pretend it wasn’t happening. That’s the beauty of magical thinking. You can pretend, once in a while, that the problem doesn’t exist.

And then it becomes unavoidable.

On the morning of the surgery, they wheeled me through the hospital on a gurney. The orderly made small talk as I lay flat beside him on the elevator. I played along, talking about the Cubs, wondering if that would be the last conversation of my life.

Lying alone on the gurney in the operating room under the brightest lights I’ve ever seen, I ran out of places to hide. I looked up at those harsh white lights.

They looked nothing like heaven.

The anesthesiologist got me ready and I looked into my surgeon’s eyes. Then everything went away.

I woke up feeling stoned, which was not altogether terrible. I heard everything went well, said I was thirsty and went back to sleep. I woke up the next day with a brutal hangover.

I called my mom from the hospital two days after the operation, three days before her party.

“Hey mom, I just had a sternotomy and am recovering in the hospital right now.” I thought “sternotomy” sounded minor. Too minor, it turned out.

“What in God’s name is a sternotomy? Did you make that up?”

I explained what happened, and my mom went from anger (“You couldn’t have scheduled it for after my party?”) to depression (“You’re all anyone will talk about”) to acceptance (“I’m grateful you’re okay”).

Her party was a huge hit, and life has mostly returned to normal. Almost.

Whether I’m catching my breath while out for a run or getting dizzy after standing up too quickly, there’s a voice that clears its throat and says, “Don’t get cocky. I’m still here.”

A few weeks ago, I tried to sneak through some hedges to avoid an awkward conversation and came out bloodied.

I brushed myself off and told Trish I was fine.

I was.

But also, you know, not.

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“You’re not gonna write about this, are you?” my mom asked, annoyed.

“Well, yeah, probably,” I said.

“Sheesh,” she replied. “Nothing’s private anymore.”

My mom grew up in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt district during World War II.

By the time she was five years old, she was aware that many of her neighbors and friends had yellow stars on their clothes. One day, her mother came home without their weekly ration of bread. She had seen a group of Jews with armed soldiers next to them and tried to give some bread to the women. A soldier threatened her with a gun, grabbed the bread, and said if she had extra to give to Saujuden, she didn’t need any herself. She came home in tears.

Neighbors spied on neighbors and old friends turned against each other. Whenever my mom asked her parents what was happening, they’d say, “Shh, die Wände haben Ohren.”

The walls have ears.

She also grew up believing she was Catholic, but a year ago a DNA test revealed she was Polish and Jewish on her mother’s side. Since her mother wasn’t Polish or Jewish, the results didn’t make sense.

My mom dismissed the report. “The past is in the past. I don’t need a DNA test to tell me who I am.”

But recently, we were having lunch in her apartment when she suddenly said, “You know, after the war, we delivered matzah from Vienna to my aunts in the countryside.”

She took another bite of salad.

I put my fork down. “I’m sorry, what?”

“We brought it when we visited them. You couldn’t find matzah outside Vienna.”

“Were your aunts Jewish?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. There weren’t any Jews in the countryside.”

I waited. “Then why would they want matzah?”

She shrugged. “I guess they liked the taste.”

I stared at her. I found it hard to believe that rural Austrian Catholics had suddenly developed an inexplicable fondness for unleavened bread.

“Mom—”

“Oh, stop. You think everything is a bigger deal than it is.”

“Well yeah, that’s kind of what I do for a living.”

She considered this, then added, almost as an afterthought, “I suppose you’d think it’s a big deal that your grandfather was married to someone else before my mother.”

“What?” My mom was ninety. I was sixty. How was I just hearing this now?

“His first wife had an affair with their chauffeur,” she said. “They divorced and he married my mother, who was fifteen years younger.”

“Their chauffeur?” I asked. “Who had a chauffeur in 1930s Vienna?”

“I wasn’t there, Mark,” she said, waving her hand, as if I were the one complicating an otherwise perfectly normal story.

“Where did the money go?”

“He lost it in Monte Carlo.”

Obviously.

“Mom, maybe that’s why you’re Jewish on your mother’s side. Maybe your birth mother was actually your dad’s—”

“Or maybe my mom was Jewish all along and hid it.”

“Well, wouldn’t she have told you that once you married Dad? Your parents knew he was Jewish, right? Wouldn’t that have been a good time to tell you?”

She looked down at her plate.

“Well, she never believed the war really ended.”

I sat there for a moment.

“What do you mean she never believed the war really ended?”

“She never got over the trauma,” my mom said. “Too many neighbors did terrible things.”

“Did she ever talk about it?”

“No. We didn’t talk about things like that.”

I met my grandmother in her Vienna apartment when I was seven or eight. While the adults talked, I explored the apartment and sampled what looked like a cookie covered in whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. It turned out to be a cracker with mayonnaise and something fishy. I spit it into the toilet.

There was also a white cross hanging above her bed. I stood in front of it for the family photo.

We stayed at a nearby hotel, but during our weeklong visit, my grandmother never left her apartment. At the time I thought it was because she was old. Now I understand it was something else.

My mother started jabbing her fork at the cake.

I took out my phone and showed her some funny pictures of my kids goofing off and she burst out laughing.

I love hearing her laugh.

Sometimes I think she’s surprised to be so happy.

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