End of an Era

Los Angeles, California

I woke up on a Friday morning and uncharacteristically reached for my phone to search the news. My text feed from NYTimes read: Film Icon Robert... Hmmm, wonder who this is about, I thought, as I clicked on it. And thus the news was delivered to me that Robert Redford had passed away. Oh my God, I exclaimed out loud to no one. Sure he was old, but it felt so unexpected to me. And I immediately recalled the same feeling when I had sat down at my old Dell computer one morning in 2008 and learned that Paul Newman had died.

I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the fall of 1969, after I had returned from a summer in Hawaii. The best summer of my life. My sister and I went to see the film at Grauman's Chinese Theater, in Hollywood, walking over the hand- and footprints of the stars of yesteryear before entering the theater.

But I was already familiar with Robert Redford. When I was in elementary school, I was diagnosed with anxiety. Yes, this malady didn't only just crop up with millennials. For an entire school year I underwent medical tests and was put on a shortened schedule at school. What followed that first, unbelievably frightening panic attack that seemingly came from nowhere, was a yearlong bout with agoraphobia. Anywhere I went out in public, I was fearful that another panic attack would occur. I now know this to be anticipatory anxiety. But no such knowledge was available to me at that time. Epilepsy was mentioned. Also, a heart murmur. But overall, my medical tests came back clean. After our family physician mentioned psychological counseling, my mother stopped taking me for appointments with him except when necessary to fill the prescription for librium.

During that time I couldn't go to markets, theaters, nor anywhere else where my anxiety might peak. Just thinking about being in those places, amidst crowds of people, could cause a surge of anxiety. So for a good part of the year, my older sister would take me to drive-in movies on the weekend. And it was on one of those nights that we saw Inside Daisy Clover, and I was introduced to Robert Redford.

Since that time I have dealt with anxiety to some degree throughout my life. But I finally committed to the counseling that my mother had shunned, and through it I received the tools to deal with the life-altering issue of chronic anxiety. I once heard Rob Reiner say that he spent decades in therapy, his presenting issue being depression. When he finally left therapy after many years, it was with the knowledge that sometimes he was going to be depressed. Sometimes I am anxious. I meditate. I breathe. I utilize the tools I have been given. And, a greatest of those is acceptance.

I always hoped I might meet Robert Redford. I wanted to tell him that my uncle had worked for his grandfather, a land developer. And I also wanted to ask him a question: Was he naturally left- or right-handed? If you are observant watching movies like Butch Cassidy, All the President''s Men, The Natural, you will see him go back and forth between his left and right hands. After learning that he had celebrated his 70th birthday at The Kona Village, I asked some of the employees, who had become our friends, if they noticed which hand he was using. They looked at me like I was crazy. So, no resolution on that mystery.

I live in LA, so it's not uncommon to run across celebrities. I've seen Barbra Streisand twice, once at a nursery and then at a theater in Costa Mesa. I saw Steve Martin at a California Pizza Kitchen in Studio City. Once, on my birthday, we followed Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner into a restaurant in Beverly Hills. But I never saw Redford, nor Paul Newman. Nor Cary Grant. Still, I can see them whenever I want, thanks to a large DVD library. I can even watch Inside Daisy Clover. And remember a different and more difficult time in my life. That era ended. And so does this one, with the loss of this Icon of film, Robert... Redford.