2016 vs. 2026: What a Difference a Date Makes

At 96, flipping through his 2016 date book, retired New York Times editor Robert W. Stock looks back at the past decade and how it's changed...everything.

Left, Robert W. Stock at 86 in Amsterdam in 2016; Right, at 96 in 2026.

I began filling out The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire the other day. I didn’t get far.

“How old are you?” was easy enough. I’m 96.

But the next question stopped me cold: “Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind?” There actually is another age that I return to from time to time—an age that changes from year to year. I look back a decade. When I’m feeling low, these visits with my former self can put my head in a different, better place.

You might think that your life circumstances 10 years ago would not be all that different from your current state, and that was the case for me—until I retired. Once I swapped my office-bound job as a newspaper editor/writer for a freelance writing career, once my body started aging in earnest, the 10-year changes began to multiply. Now, they’re positively huge.

I open my 2016 At-A-Glance appointment book at random. It’s August 10th. My wife, Caryl, and I have driven six hours to Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario, Canada, home of the Shaw Festival Theatre. On this day, after taking in an intense performance of Ibsen’s Uncle Vanya, we head for Niagara Falls. It’s our first visit, and I’m blown away by the vastness and the constant roar. With nightfall, the crowd around us suddenly quiets, awed by the fireworks that paint the Falls all the colors of a rainbow.

I began filling out The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire the other day. I didn’t get far. “How old are you?” was easy enough. I’m 96. But the next question stopped me cold: “Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind?” There actually is another age that I return to from time to time—an age that changes from year to year. I look back a decade. When I’m feeling low, these visits with my former self can put my head in a different, better place.

It’s March 30^th. Caryl, fresh from an art residency in the south of France, joins me in Paris. We walk everywhere, catch up with friends, explore restaurants—pure delight. On to Amsterdam, where we’re joined by a Polish friend who guides us around this city of canals and aggressive bicyclists. I have to jump back on the sidewalk as they pedal past by the dozens. They far outnumber pedestrians, and they have the right of way.

Travel, for business and/or pleasure, has always been a treasured part of my adult life. On these backward journeys, I tend to remember the best parts of my trips, when I was having the most fun. I feel grateful and lucky and sort of proud of myself. Look at the adventures I had, the life I fashioned.

Inevitably, not all of those memories are so benign.

On the train from Paris to Amsterdam, I bang my right knee wrestling with the luggage, and I somehow manage to do it again on the trip back. My knee balloons, I can’t walk, and I spend the five days before our flight home in pain, flat on my back. So much for Springtime in Paris!

And there is another kind of discomfort built into these backward looks. They remind me of how drastically my circumstances have changed over a decade...for the worse.

My physical shape today has little in common with its 2016 version. I’ve stopped driving. Given my reduced vision, hearing, and reaction time, I’m a clear and present danger on the road. My hips would rebel before the first hour of a day’s walk around Paris, and I don’t have the strength to wrestle luggage anymore. I’ve even let my passport lapse. Here’s how that decision was made:

Caryl has always dreamt of taking an African safari. Last year, I decided that it was now or never. We would go first class, hiring guides to meet us at airports and watch over us all through the trip. Break the bank! I reached out to two safari companies, described our hopes and limitations, and studied their proposals.

Early one morning, as we exercised in our New York apartment to try and get a handle on our various aches and pains, I came to my senses. We were simply too weak and vulnerable for such a trip. What if one of the guides missed a connection? What if one of us had a serious medical problem, of which we’ve had our share, in the middle of Tanzania? So much for our African safari…and our passport!

One of the joys—and regrets—of my look back is the chance to revisit friends and family who are no longer part of my life.

And there is another kind of discomfort built into these backward looks. They remind me of how drastically my circumstances have changed over a decade...for the worse. My physical shape today has little in common with its 2016 version.

All through my 2016 appointment book I find references to meetings of the “Greek Geeks.” In my mind’s eye I see the eight of us Geeks spread around Joy’s living room. Our scholarly leader, Steven, is holding forth on the tragic ironies of Euripides’s Medea. Depending on whether or not we have fulfilled our assignment and read the play, we are following his argument keenly or haphazardly. The following discussion is interrupted by puns and a flurry of preparations for dinner.

After many years, the Greek Geeks meetings are no more. Joy died. Steven moved out of town. The warm memories are bittersweet.

In 2016, my close friends are still part of my life. A Bethesda weekend of journalism shop talk and laughter with Tom and Scottie. A Sag Harbor shouting match with Irwin. In 2026, all of the old friends have passed.

Order the book…

I have a favorite memory of that time: I’m sitting in a restaurant a few blocks from our apartment in Manhattan, waiting. A younger woman bursts through the door. Blonde, cheeks red, bundled up against the winter winds. Before she puts away her coat or the backpack she always carries, filled with her notebooks and her poetry, she rushes over to my table. I stand and she throws her arms around me and squeezes tight.

In 2016, my close friends are still part of my life. A Bethesda weekend of journalism shop talk and laughter with Tom and Scottie. A Sag Harbor shouting match with Irwin. In 2026, all of the old friends have passed.

I love this remembrance of my daughter Barbara as she was then, so full of life, even as I mourn her death. My eyes fill as I write those words, the delight in my memory of her a decade ago shaded by my feelings of loss.

My advanced age has made the regrets aspect of the 10-year visit more intrusive. But I still pull out the appointment book when nostalgia calls. I cannot resist the opportunity to recapture for a moment the people and the events, the life, that was once mine.

Check out all the Oldster personal essays…

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From 1967-1997, Robert W. Stock served as an award-winning writer and editor at seven different New York Times Sunday sections including the Magazine, Week in Review, and Business & Financial. He wrote extensively for these sections and other parts of the paper, and created and wrote including pioneering a column about the elderly.

After retiring from The Times, Stock became a freelance editor and writer, producing online essays and magazine articles, ghostwriting management books and biographies, co-authoring medical books. In January of 2024 he published his memoir, Me & The Times: My wild ride from elevator operator to New York Times editor, columnist, and change agent (1967-97).