I got this message from Casey this morning. It was that rare thing – advice I wanted, and advice I needed.

I loved it and was touched by it, and will stop agonizing about my e-bicycle and buy it tomorrow. I’ll put half of it on a credit card and use savings for the rest. (I appreciate that some of you offered to help me buy the e-bike. It’s kind, but no thanks. There is a lot of great need out there, and every penny people send me is going to the refugees and the Mansion residents and aides. This is a personal thing, and I’m responsible for it myself. I’ll take care of it.)

Here’s Casey’s message:

“Jon, I am 78-years-old and as co-ordinated as an ashtray. The only reason I didn’t fail PE in prep school is that I was a good student and well-behaved cheerer from the sidelines at all those god-awful field hockey and lacrosse games. But in the last five years, I have ridden an e-bike on the back roads of France, Viet Nam, Chile, Denmark, and Holland. Here at home, my husband and I ride about 10 miles every Sunday–and I do most of my daily errands on my bike. Buy one…put it on a credit card and pay it off over time. It will be SO worth it. Just wear a helmet and don’t ride through mud, gravel, or sand–the only times I’ve fallen. ONWARD.”

Well, if 78-year-old Casey can do this in Vietnam and Chile and Holland., I can do it in Cambridge, N.Y.

Maria and I have had long talks about my reluctance to spend the money and my failure to take good care of myself over the years.

Maria believes this is important for my health and sense of well-being. I have never really taken care of my body, I’ve been body-shamed ever since I wet the bed until I was 17 and punished repeatedly by my father for that and for refusing to try out for any teams.

I’ve never really taken care of my body or paid much attention to it.

It’s just something that holds my brain so I can write and take pictures.

At my age, with two chronic diseases, I need to do better than that so I can go on bloviating and loving Maria and the dogs and blog and donkeys and my life.

This is a rather deep issue for me, I realize.

My father and I were not good for one another.

I was not the son he wanted, and he was not the father I needed.

We both understood that, and after he hit me in the head with a baseball and call me a sissy for falling down unconscious, I never really spoke with him again.

Nor did I ever once regret it.

He meant well, I think; he always wanted me to be an athlete like he was and feared I was just a sissy for reading books and writing instead.  I think he feared for me.

Sports helped him climb out of poverty and into a community that loved him. Because of games, he made connections with people that served him his whole life.

I never did that. Writers and oddball children don’t make connections like that in the gym or the clubhouse. He sent me off to summer camp against my will,  and perhaps to force me to be more athletic, and you can imagine what happened.

I ran off and hid in the woods until the State Police found me with their dogs.

I had a quiet three days out there and made friends with what seemed to me to be a stray dog I named Sneakers because he brought me an old worn-out sneaker and then ate most of it.

Sneakers slept next to me at night and vanished during the day. I wanted to take him home.

I did well except for the mosquitoes and was never sent to camp again.

When he heard the state police rescues dogs, I yelled at Sneakers to go and save himself, and he did, and I never saw him again.

My father was quite embarrassed, and I was glad for that.

For the rest of my life, my father avoided me, and I avoided him. My older brother was a football player, and they loved to talk sports, so they got along.

I saw my father a few days before he died at the age of 88, and I asked him what his greatest regret was in life. Oh, he said, I regret that I couldn’t play tennis for the last year or two of my life.

What about you? he asked. Well, I said, let me think about it for a bit. I never saw him alive again.

Since then, – and except for my riding bicycle, I found any kind of exercise other than walking disturbing and uncomfortable.

I rode a bike for 15 years and loved it, and then gave up regular, structured exercise except for walking for good. I am reasonably healthy, but I do have heart disease and diabetes.

I love my life and want to keep it; I have so much to live for. But I couldn’t see spending a lot of money on an e-bike if I wasn’t going to ride it. And how could I be sure?

For me, any interruption from my writing is an irritating intrusion. That is not a healthy thing, although it’s okay with me.

I realize there are some deep issues here beyond the money, although that is a real issue for me, and I saw that I need to get a bit of professional help. I do suffer from mental illness; I was in therapy for many years. And the therapist who gets me through the hard times is still around and was happy to hear from me.

I don’t need a great deal of help here – the issues are not life-bending – but maybe they are. My body needs tending, and I love riding bikes. With the e-bike, perhaps I can leave this ghost behind, and get the support I need to ride it. My heart would be happy, so would Maria.

So would my friend Sue Silverstein. But it, she said, you’re worth it. You probably don’t feel you deserve things for yourself. Ouch.

But I also need to understand what my very great and deep hesitation is.

My body deserves better and needs better. Maria is entitled to me to stick around for a while. She will never grocery shop if I’m gone, she’ll go back to eating bread and cheese while she works.

If it’s my father, it’s time we made peace.

And Zinnia and I have become great pals. She’s only a pup.

Casey snapped me out of my fog – sometimes advice can work – and so did Maria, who I listen to. She cried when I told her I was getting some therapy about this, at her suggestion. Thanks for listening to me, she said.

As a result of our talk, I called the therapist who got me through the breakdown and set up an appointment for next week. I decided to buy the bike and then get support for riding it, rather than the other way around.

I’m not about to tell the therapist or Maria or the readers of the blog that I punked out. Casey is right. Just go and do it. I want it to work. I told Maria that if I spent all this money, I sure as Hell wasn’t going to let the thing gather dust in the barn.

If you’re watching Dad, this could be the moment you hoped for.