I have been blessed to be able to travel. I’ll never forget my first plane ride, at 17, when my family vacationed in Bermuda. The experience took my breath away. I was so worked up about my first trip to Europe when I was 23 that I managed to make myself sick. I can still remember taking the Underground in London and the Metro in Paris, the first street I walked on in Rome, and how I felt seeing the Goya and El Greco paintings in The Prado in Madrid.

The Clothed Maja (La Maja Vestida) by Goya

Our trip to Romania in the mid-seventies gave me a first-hand look at Communism. No one seemed to care about serving us. Not waiters, not employees in the hotels, not anyone. Romanians had no incentive to work hard. It didn’t lead to promotions and improved lifestyles. When we went to Morocco, camels blocked the road from the airport to downtown Casablanca. The winding, montainous roads in Crete were dangerously unpaved, and the most beautiful drive in the world was on California’s Pacific Coast Highway from San Diego clear up to Seattle, Washington.

Along the Pacific Coast Highway

I’ve traveled for pleasure and for business. Even though I prefer the former, the latter introduced me to Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Atlanta and more. I traveled so frequently to some places that I began to feel like I was visiting an old friend.

Most people all over the world never get the chance to see the world. They worry about their next meal and keeping their kids safe, not where they’re going on their next holiday. Their “scenery” is often ruble, mud or garbage. The only language they know is called survival.

Life is no vacation in Haiti

I wish everyone had the same opportunity to travel that I’ve had. It is one of the greatest gifts in my life and I am deeply thankful for it.

My father Sam died twenty-three years ago today. He was 69 and had been diagnosed with melanoma seven months before. Once melanoma metastasizes, the average life span is around six months.  I read the other day about a new melanoma drug that will prolong melanoma patients’ lives up to 10 months.  Not good enough.

Daddy and Geri

Melanoma can be cured, if it is caught early enough. Although genetics increase the likelihood of getting the disease, doctors believe prolonged exposure to the sun is the most likely cause.  My dad was an avid tennis player.  He played for hours outdoors every weekend, from May to September, with the sun beating down on the courts. We have no idea if that was the cause because back then no one knew much about this type of cancer.

If you’re anything like I was in my teens and twenties, getting a tan was high on my list of priorities. I slathered a mixture of baby oil and iodine on my skin before I went to the beach, then I stayed out in the sun for hours. “One or more severe, blistering sunburns as a child or teenager can increase your risk of melanoma as an adult,” according to the Mayo Clinic website.  Other risk factors include:

• Fair skin: Having less pigment (melanin) in your skin means you have less protection from damaging UV radiation. If you have blond or red hair, light-colored eyes, and you freckle or sunburn with ease, you are more likely to develop melanoma than is someone with a darker complexion. But melanoma can develop in people with darker complexions, including Hispanics and blacks.

• Living closer to the equator or at a higher elevation: People living closer to the earth’s equator, where the sun’s rays are more direct, experience higher amounts of UV radiation, as compared with those living in higher latitudes. If you live at a high elevation, you’re also exposed to more UV radiation.

• Having many moles or unusual moles: Having more than 50 ordinary moles on your body indicates an increased risk of melanoma. Also, having an unusual type of mole increases the risk of melanoma. Known medically as dysplastic nevi, these tend to be larger (greater than 1/5 inch or 5 millimeters) than normal moles and have irregular borders and a mixture of colors.

• A weakened immune system: People with weakened immune systems have an increased risk of skin cancer. This includes people who have HIV/AIDS and those who have undergone organ transplants.

I urge all of my FOF friends to have a full body check by a top dermatologist once a year, weather or not you think you’re at a higher risk of developing melanoma. It takes about two minutes.  Make sure the doctor you choose uses a special magnifying glass to scan your body and that he checks your head, too.

It’s a simple way to avoid a deadly disease.

Miss you, daddy!

Wedding, bar mitzvah and retirement party toasts are usually boring, scripted or lack sincerity. Not so at Katherine and Chad’s wedding last night in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Katherine is FOF’s talented art director and photographer and Chad works for a theatre company in New York. When Chad’s younger brother, Will, brilliantly toasted the new couple, he mentioned being worried that Chad would be lonely when he went away to college. “But Katherine took away that worry,” Will explained.

Will

Will praised Chad’s abilities, sensibilities and good humor. But it was one line that Will brought up during the toast that went right to the heart of Chad’s big heart.

“Be good to everyone,” Chad once advised Will.

What a statement! We should all take heed.

You can tell how good Chad is going to be to Katherine just by looking at him

 

If you have a mother, or anyone else you care about who is in his or her eighties, and they live alone, you’ve should make certain that they wear an emergency alert button.

Betty, an 82-year-old woman I met the other evening, told me she had fallen in her apartment a few months ago because she was terribly weak, with flu-like symptoms. “Once I fell, I could not even drag myself to the phone,” she told me. ”I laid there for four days, until the super of the building came in, at the urging of a friend who had been trying to reach me,” Betty said. Although her daughter calls frequently, she didn’t think anything was wrong when she couldn’t reach Betty for a few days.

Dehydrated, with broken ribs, Betty was taken to the hospital and is now mostly recovered. “You should wear a medical alert device,” I told her. “I have one but I felt good, so I didn’t put it on,” Betty answered.

My mother was just like Betty. Didn’t think she needed the button around her neck when she was home in her studio apartment. “I only go to the bathroom, which is feet away. Nothing is going to happen,” she assured me. Well, she did fall one evening and we didn’t get to her until the next morning. Her hip was broken. She never recovered after surgery and died less than three weeks later.

Even if I felt like a million, I would get one of those devices, especially if I lived alone. My mother’s generation of women was often stubborn and foolish. I can dig in my heels with the best of them, but not over something that could save my life.