“He felt that it was a mistake to look for signs and portents instead of waiting until they were revealed to him in their own good time.”— Stefan Zweig, The Miracles of Life

01-01-2000 was looming as the end of November began with fog on the horizon and light through the blinds--a time when even the smallest events of the week seemed to whisper hope and luck.  

November 23, 1999:

Photo: Robyn Dolgin

I called Robyn Dolgin to confirm her appointment at the Verona office — we’re putting together a financial plan for her, though she’s “pay-by-the-hour only.” I don’t mind; Robyn’s a pleasure to work with, a former colleague from Charles Schwab & Co. — one of those people whose calm competence reminds you that the world still makes sense.

That evening, Alan and I drove to LAX to pick up Lauren, freshly escaped from New York University and beaming with collegiate confidence. Watching her stride through baggage claim with that half-grown, half-knowing look made me think of the film Six Degrees of Separation from 1993— those home-from-college scenes when youthful certainty fills every room. Lauren wasn’t quite like that, but close enough for us to laugh about it later.

November 24, 1999:  

We joined the crowds at the multiplex for End of Days — “The Arnold” saving the world once more, this time from Satan himself. The film earned a polite C, though its poster’s proclamation “The End Is Coming” felt strangely apt for 1999.

“Between good and evil, only one will survive.” — End of Days

Later that night, I insisted we switch gears entirely — from apocalypse to Americana — watching Norman Rockwell: Painting America on PBS.  His worlds of Thanksgiving tables and small-town innocence felt wonderful against all that end-of-the-world bravado. Between the two, I suppose we saw both extremes of the century’s imagination: fire and family.

November 25, 1999:

We spent Thanksgiving at Susan Freiman’s home — laughter, candles, and a group photo that captured the fleeting illusion of time standing still. Everyone’s smiles had that slight tremor of nostalgia, as though we already knew this century’s gatherings were numbered.

Who was there?  Alan and I, Jack and Gloria, Lauren and Carrie Art Kleinman and his daughter, Stephanie, and son, Bradley, and the entire Ron & Cora Fischman Family (Michael, Leslie and Nicole). Good food, good laughs.  What more could one ask for?  Thankful.

November 26, 1999:  

Alan and I met on our rooftop for a Verona meeting — the kind that feels both practical and prophetic when held under an open sky.

Later, I opened letters — handwritten relics of real conversation.
Barbara Reynolds wrote about stormy weather, wrinkled skin, and the Leonid Meteor Shower.  Only she would know about things in other orbits.  I would have no clue otherwise.

“The moon is getting full again… did you get to see it?” she asked.

She had just seen The Insider (“complete with scenes of Berkeley”) and The Straight Story, two films about truth and forgiveness. 

“What do you think you’re doing? You’re telling the truth.” — The Insider

“The worst part of being old is remembering when you were young.” — The Straight Story

Then came my cousin, Edna Maestas, whose letter began with gratitude from the gift I sent for her Birthday last month—

“Thank you so much for the Carolina Herrera! I’m looking forward to wearing it to two special Christmas parties.”

Her humor brightened the page:  a story about a woman fainting while painting because the directions said to apply “two coats.” 

But then the letter deepened. She spoke of mediating between two teenage girls — one called a mojada by another who didn’t realize her own mixed roots.

“Racism is ugly,” she wrote. “We all have Spanish and Indian blood of some sort.”

And then, I like how she gracefully wrote:

“I don’t say English only, I say English plus! … No digo Español nomás — yo digo Español y más!”

She closed with warmth that will stick with me:

“Wishing you and your family and friends a Thanksgiving filled with love for one another.”

November 27, 1999: 

Breakfast at Il Fornaio with Lauren was blessed— the kind of morning when conversation hums between the clink of cappuccino spoons. Then a matinee of Liberty Heights, Barry Levinson’s portrait of America in transition.

“You’re only young once, but you remember forever.” -Liberty Heights

That night we pivoted to The World Is Not Enough. Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond proclaimed, 

“There’s no point in living if you can’t feel alive.”  -The World Is Not Enough

It felt like the line of a man (and perhaps a century) trying to convince himself of his own vitality. Two films in one day — one nostalgic, one kinetic — both held by the same truth: time keeps moving, but memory slows it down.

November 28, 1999: 

A quiet Sunday of reading and rest.

A letter from my niece Holly arrived, typed neatly on white paper.

“How come you never come for Thanksgiving anymore?” she began, disarmingly direct.

She told me she’d heard I lived “in the same building as Mariah Carey” and urged me to “get her autograph.”  Her grades followed — “English B, Language B, History C+…” — then a confession about struggling in math and a hopeful plea:

“Maybe you could help me when you come for Christmas.”

It was pure sweetness with a round of family guilt.  The innocence of her words was its own kind of faith — a reminder that in an age of chaos and countdowns, family letters were still the simplest proof of connection.

November 29, 1999: 

We drove Lauren back to LAX, sending her toward the skyscrapers of New York and another semester of learning and independence. That night Gloria made us dinner — a quiet closing note after a week of noise and meaning.

Between End of Days and Toy Story 2, we were warned of Y2K this week, the movies dramatized our anxieties, and yet my letters — Barbara’s, Edna’s, Holly’s — breathed something timeless: gratitude, humor, forgiveness, and love.

“You never forget kids like Andy, but they forget you.” — Toy Story 2

The signs were always there — in a full moon, a wrinkled hand, a niece’s typed letter — not heralding an end, but reminding us that every ending, in its own time, reveals the quiet miracle of simply being alive. 

“He is staggering in a wonderful kind of vertigo.”
— Stefan Zweig, A Story Told in Twilight