Essayist Tom Robotham connects with Paris in an antique bookstore.
By Tom Robotham
This year, I’ll turn 70.
What the fuck?!
It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was sitting in my pajamas on the floor of my family’s living room in Staten Island, watching The Donna Reed Show with my sister beside me and my father behind me in his easy chair. It was 1958, which means I was only 2 years old, but the moment remains vivid in my memory—not only the image but the feeling I had as I watched that glossy depiction of the American Dream: the comfortable suburban home, the attentive mom in her dress and apron, the handsome, hard-working dad, and two wholesome, well-scrubbed kids.
None of this seemed far removed from my life. Sure, we lived in a small apartment back then, but within a year, we moved into a brand-new three-bedroom house on a quiet suburban street.
Over the next 20 years, I was afforded every opportunity anyone could hope for. My parents weren’t wealthy, but they provided all that I needed to maximize my potential: plenty of food and warmth, a safe neighborhood with good schools, books and music lessons at home, athletic opportunities, moral support, good values, and, when it came time, money for college.
Now, as I approach the threshold of my eighth decade of life, I’m compelled to wonder whether I’ve made the most of those gifts.
It’s gratifying to know that I’ve achieved a lot of my personal and professional goals.
Marrying and raising a family in a nice suburban house was always a dream of mine, perhaps fueled by that early exposure to family sitcoms, and having done so—my kids are now grown and flourishing—remains the single greatest joy of my life.
Along the way, I found time to pursue important personal interests. I’ve loved horses since early childhood, and while I never became an expert horseman, I eventually learned to ride pretty well. My riding days may now be over, due to some balance issues, but memories of hours atop my favorite mare—who has since died—sustain me. Likewise, I’d always been drawn to martial arts and at 40 I recorded in my journal that I wanted to earn a black belt. It took a while longer, but at 52 I finally did so, and it remains one of the best things I’ve ever done for my body, mind and soul.
Travel is another thing that has nourished me, especially to Paris where I always feel at home, as if I have some connection to it from a past life. Alas, I procrastinated for too long, but in 2013, a girlfriend gave me a small replica of the Eiffel Tower as a reminder that I needed to go. Another four years passed, but in 2017 I finally made it, and I’ve been back four times since then.
Professionally, I’ve enjoyed some success as well. Before I knew exactly what I wanted to do for a living, I knew that I wanted to do something that was meaningful to me, so as not to be condemned to a life of quiet desperation, as Thoreau put it. I found such meaning in writing and teaching.
I’ve tasted life’s richness in many other ways too. And yet, as 2026 begins to unfold, I’m reminded of an automated announcement in the London Underground: Mind the gap (the space between the train and platform). Sheba Hart, played by Cate Blanchett, refers to it in the film Notes on a Scandal and observes that this is also sage advice for each of us in our daily lives: that we should be aware of “the distance between life as you dream it and life as it is.”
For me, the gap isn’t huge but it is significant.
Afflicted by laziness—not to mention indecision on the scale of Hamlet’s—I’ve let at least a dozen nonfiction book ideas collect dust as I’ve oscillated between two thoughts: I need to do that and what’s the point? And yet I know what the point is, and it’s not some vain and foolish hope for fame and royalties. It’s my love of the craft—the process as a reward in itself.
Similarly, I regret that I’ve allowed my modest musical skills to rust over like some old car on cinderblocks in a dirt-poor section of West Virginia. I never had any great desire to perform in public, though I’ve done a bit of that. Playing in private quarters with friends, on the other hand, is a great joy, and something I’d like to work my way up to again. Most of all, though, playing piano and guitar feeds my soul, like writing, even in solitude. And yet I continually put it off because reclaiming those callouses, and dexterity at the piano, is hard work.
I don’t dream of building castles in the air. Life as I dream it, as the hour grows late, is fairly modest. I want to continue to teach and write and study but with more discipline; I want to strive for excellence while too often I settle for just ok. I want to take better care of my body, not with some athletic goal in mind but just adequately enough to enjoy long strolls in Paris, London and New York and short hikes in the mountains. I don’t have any illusions of mastering the guitar or piano, but I’d like to get to the point where I can play some of my favorite works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Schubert with some sense of fluency and hold my own with guitar in hand during a campfire jam session.
Beyond that, life as I dream it is filled with great, bonding conversations with good friends—and on that count, I’m happy to say, there’s hardly any distance at all between life as I dream it and life as it is. In this, my eighth decade, I’m more grateful than ever for those cherished companions—those I see regularly and those with whom I reconnect only on occasion but with whom our bond seems ironclad.
As for the rest of it, I suppose we’re talking about the standard list of New Year’s resolutions, most of which—let’s face it—fall by the wayside by March. No matter. I shall try to mind the gap and take satisfaction in small triumphs.