Author: admin

The conference room was decorated in that sterile version of New England charm often found in banks and dentists’ offices, a family of ducks marching proudly around their wallpaper border in tiny straw hats. Old pewter kitchen utensils hung on the wall just in case the loan officer needed to whip up some Indian pudding for an afternoon meeting. We all separated as distantly as possible into three tiny camps, each at one corner of the richly stained oak conference table. The seller and his lawyer seemed to be very seasoned at the cycle of buying and selling houses. I, on the other hand, was buying my first house and felt a certain solemnity for the occasion. While the seller looked as if he usually goes to a tractor pull after unloading a house, I was the nerdy kid dressed up for a spelling bee. In the back sat the two real estate agents. This was just another day at work for them, and they chatted with each other about their clients. As we settled in, my real estate agent looked up from her corner and hurled a question at me: “You were an easy one. How many houses did I show you? Maybe three?” I looked up from my stack of mysterious papers and tried hard to smile. I was in my corner with my own real estate lawyer, sitting under a muffin tin hanging from the wall. My lawyer sensed my angst – or noticed my tie – and guided me gently through the process. Then, suddenly, a flurry of signing began and quickly ended. A set of keys dropped on top of the pile of documents in front of me. I bought a house.

394-396 Davis Street was an 85-year-old two-family house in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in the sleepy western part of the state along the mighty Connecticut River. The house had been well-maintained throughout the decades. The dark, natural woodwork inside had miraculously escaped generations of tenants with great ideas and a bucket of paint. The walls stood straight and strong, the two furnaces – one for each apartment – fired efficiently, there was plenty of hot water, and I never smelled smoke. The floors were light, shiny hardwood – the kind people pine for every day on HGTV. Still, the old gal needed some love and attention. The 50-year-old aluminum storm windows, with their panes rarely in the distorted little tracks, caused untold aggravation. There was a 1960s flower-power sticker on the side of the upstairs apartment bathtub, and the detached garage had no doors. The garage’s north wall leaned precariously over my car and lawnmower. The cedar shingles on the exterior walls had rotted in places. Though there were some major projects to tackle, I thought I would try my uncalloused hand at the easy and cosmetic.

I already had a hammer, so I started by replacing the house numbers. After pulling off the stubborn old numbers and replacing them with bright, new brass ones, I crossed the street to admire my work. Wow, I was on to something. I was officially a do-it-yourselfer. Then, I replaced the two mailboxes hanging between the twin front doors. Again, from across the street, I could see my future unfold, and I was starting to gain a bit of confidence. Soon, I would advance to installing a dryer exhaust vent in the basement.

But my first and most critical task was to find a tenant for the empty downstairs apartment. This was terrifying, and I needed help. I started by joining the Franklin County Landlords’ Business Association. My first quarterly meeting was in the private function room at Famous Bill’s Restaurant near Greenfield’s busiest intersection. There, as people mingled before the meeting began, I found a lawyer fielding questions about abandoned motorcycles, smelly tenants, hens raised in kitchen cabinets, and of course—everyone’s raw nerve—unpaid rent.

The Association provided coffee and chicken wings. I looked suspiciously at the wings and poured myself some coffee. Standing awkwardly in the moments before the meeting came to order, I watched members greet one another, slap backs, and eat chicken. Suddenly, as if out of thin air, an unusual woman appeared before me, glanced at the unlit, unmanned bar behind us, and blurted cheerfully, “Why can’t I get a glass of wine? Hello! I’M Audra Whipley-Ott.” I liked the way she emphasized, “I’m,” and I particularly liked her aristocratic name. Audra Whipley-Ott was very tall and wispy with disciplined posture and a bubble of hair atop her head reaching even higher. Her voice demanded attention if not curiosity. Audra told me about her eight-unit house on High Street, adding in a conspiratorial murmur, “in the nice part of town.” This left me wondering if 394-396 Davis Street was in, or out of, that nice part of town. With a searing glance and a sweeping, commanding hand motion, Audra magically deployed the catering staff to slide behind the bar, flip the lights on, and serve her a glass of Merlot. She offered me a glass, but I remembered the Styrofoam coffee cup in my hand and declined. There could be undetected dynamics, factions, or coalitions in this room. Although I surely wanted to be on Audra’s team, I was not ready to be identified as the new guy dissatisfied with the fare offered by the Association.

The meeting began, and Audra abandoned me for a seat up front. By the end of the evening, I had adopted the landlord’s mantra as my own: Screen. Your. Tenants. I will never forget the day they walked into my life: Chris and Lindsay, recent graduates from the University of Massachusetts, were mature beyond their years. They toured the sunny apartment – the first they would share together – and loved it. Everything I had absorbed about screening tenants went out the old aluminum storm window, and I accepted Chris and Lindsay as my first tenants based solely on my intuition. This was exactly what the lawyer at Famous Bill’s said not to do. Nevertheless, I dodged a bullet. Chris and Lindsay were quiet and tidy, they paid their rent on time, and they were darned nice neighbors. And the best part? Chris was a professional carpenter. Through careful deliberations, Chris and I came to an agreement, a sort of rent reduction in exchange for replacing the rotting sections of cedar shingles.

For my own less ambitious projects, I sought Chris’s advice and, oddly, waited eagerly for his congratulations. I was almost old enough to be his father, yet I wanted to tug his arm and say, “Hey, Chris! Look! I spackled a hole!” After my triumphs with house numbers and mailboxes, I was ready to tackle that basement dryer vent. I would install a tube so that exhaust from the clothes dryer would now blow outside the house, no longer filling the basement with a linty steam that would trigger the overabundance of smoke detectors I had installed.

At the hardware store, I had to make a choice between the white plastic tube stiffened by rings or the aluminum “system” that expanded to the required shape and length. The latter reminded me of Jiffy Pop, and that looked like fun. An easy job for sure: just clamp the tube to the bottom of the dryer, expand the tube, and clamp the other end to the vent already in the basement window. I unpacked the kit and started to stretch the aluminum tube until it ripped in two pieces. Hmm. This aluminum foil material was more fragile than I had anticipated. No problem. The same anxiety that had compelled me to pepper the entire house with smoke detectors also drove me to buy a spare “system.” I unpacked the parts, intent on being more careful.

Working with a surgeon’s precision and bomb diffuser’s unease, I finally clamped the tube at the dryer end. So far so good. Then I gingerly expanded the tube to make my “S” shape. “Aha. I’m getting the hang of this,” I said aloud to no one. However, while trying to clamp the opposite end to the window vent, all hell broke loose. The aluminum arm was suddenly aiming a punch at me reminiscent of the robot on Lost in Space flailing its arms and crying, “Danger! Doctor Smith! Danger!” Unanchored by gravity, I had become the bungling Dr. Smith. I was on a distant planet wearing a turtleneck and slacks gasping for air. Hours later, hands scraped and spirit broken, I turned the last screw on the clamp at the window vent end. Around both ends were curls of excess aluminum ribbons mocking me, but I was finished.

Returning to more remedial projects, I became the Goldie Locks of Greenfield’s three hardware stores. Rugg Lumber was too advanced (for contractors, really), Home Depot was too soft (though really where I belonged), and True Value was between the two, which I optimistically decided was just right. My first trip to Rugg Lumber left me very confused because I didn’t speak the language. I felt like a child on the first day at a new school cafeteria: I didn’t know which line was for ordering, which was for paying, or even where the snack bar was. Inevitably, I ordered something I didn’t want, paid too soon, then turned the corner to see the chocolate chip cookies and Doritos displayed right behind me. The Rugg Lumber clerk rang up my purchases sympathetically. Surely, he was thinking to himself that I belonged at Home Depot. Weeks later, while chatting with Chris about my next trip to Rugg Lumber, he used the phrase “contractors’ hours” to indicate that they open very early in the morning. “Contractors’ hours.” I liked the term and felt as if I had been given a secret password or a fraternity handshake. “I’ll show up at 6:30AM and wear my tool belt,” I declared with new confidence. “Well, um, contractors don’t wear tool belts,” Chris said, just in case I wasn’t kidding.

Months later, during a routine check of the dryer project in the basement, I noticed a neat seal of aluminum tape around the tube at the vent end that had given me so much angst. Had the tube created its own skin graft making the seal tight, strong and tidy? No, Will Robinson. It had likely come undone and begun to flail frantically behind the dryer while Chris and Lindsay did a load of laundry. Chris must have fixed it without a discouraging word to me. I had never heard of aluminum tape.

I always suspected Maggie was a witch. Even when she said she’d been in the novitiate – Franciscans, perhaps? – my belief persisted. There was awareness in her touch. The objects of daily life seemed more significant: a ceramic bowl revealed its earthen origin, a knotted ribbon was a talisman, a spoon became a wand. Maggie moved through her space with a deliberate grace that connected her to other worlds.

One August afternoon, she taught me to make quiche. We’d been drinking cold tea, lying out in the sun on the baked floorboards of her open third floor deck. She always referred to it as the South of France. Indeed, we felt like Riviera contessas, tanned and fascinating, sipping our drinks, applying scented oils, adjusting floppy straw hats and sunglasses. By late afternoon, we were starving. We shuffled into the house in our flip-flops, trailing our towels through the ancient screen door. It took us a moment to adjust to the dim interior—the South of France had been dazzlingly bright.

In the kitchen, Maggie’s touch was at its most assured. She foraged from cupboard to cannister, pitcher to pot, carefully choosing ingredients. Eggs held the secrets of the universe. Freshly grated cheese invoked all earthly mysteries. Milk and onions and the small remains of other meals became elements in the mix. All the while, I listened to her talk about her holy days, her hippie days, her married and divorced days. I watched her hands work through all the practiced motions until the cooking ritual was complete.

Later, tea gone, quiche nothing but sprinkled crumbs for familiar crows, we sat outside again among the potted plants and peeling shingles. Together we watched the sun set below the ridge of houses that bordered Whitley Terrace. We summoned the peace of shared silence. We communed with the departing daylight. Maggie lit candles and incense – to keep the bugs away, she said – and we settled down to wait for darkness and our sister moon.

I hate open casket funerals. Grandpa looks more alive now than he did before he died. His hands are fastened together on his chest over a smart black suit jacket. They’ve tastefully applied rouge to his cheeks, like the final flush of life. And if you stand still and stare into the casket for long enough, your imagination begins to falsify the imperceptible rise and fall of breath. It would be the first time in years that grandpa was able to breathe without a cannula. My dad places grandpa’s glasses on him; they’re wire-rimmed and were last in fashion in the 70s.

The funeral home is nice. The casket has an enormous bouquet of red, white, and blue flowers that say, Loving Family. Dad stands vigilant by the antechamber rotely greeting guests. There is a box of tissues in the middle of the front row, perched by itself on a chair between my dad and his three brothers. I wonder if the funeral home put it there, or if my dad was prescient enough to bring it. The funeral home is playing “classical” instrumental covers of pop music. I think I’m the only person in the room young enough to pick up the melody of “Dynamite” by K-Pop group BTS. There are worn, mismatched, squashy, brocade couches lining the rectangular room like a row of teeth. The doors have a seal on them, and every time someone opens the door the vacuum of the seal smacks like a sharp round of applause.

“Are you Brian’s daughter?” A woman in her mid-fifties approaches me. “I’m Tina. I’m a part of the Pulmonary Fibrosis Facebook group your grandpa was in.” She shakes my hand, her hand cool like a river-chilled stone. “Peter was a pillar of the PF community—he was always advocating for us, and was a great friend.” Grandpa had spoken about the Facebook group on occasion, but I had never imagined him a “pillar of the community.” I wonder how many funerals Tina goes to as the head of a terminal illness support group.

“Thank you for coming.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Tina bids me goodbye and moves on.

The men stand at the front of the room around the open casket talking about fixing garage doors and buying propane for backup generators. The women sit at the back. The music is so loud that I can only hear the group I’m next to. I awkwardly haunt both sides, wanting to be near my dad but repelled by the corpse.

My mom pulls me to sit on one of the camelback couches. After her flight from Thailand two days ago she had told me, “I knew him for 27 years. He was like the father I never had.”

She whispers in my ear in Thai, “They do better makeup on corpses here.” “What, in America? I didn’t know Thai people did open casket funerals.”

“Yes, on the first day of the three—or five. They show the corpse for the family. You’ve never seen it, have you?”

“No, but—Thai people, we cremate, right?”

“I think it’s the weather; people don’t keep as well in the heat. It’s better here in the cold.”

I have only ever been to one Thai funeral. It was for my great aunt’s husband. I was six and had never met him. I fought my mom about putting on a black dress and made us late. We attended the last day of the funerary rites in an unwalled temple. It was the height of the hot season, and the misting fans feebly circulated the air around the space. Because of our lateness we sat in the back. There were like a hundred people in attendance.

When the cremation began, I was pulled out from the nominal shade of the temple and into the plaza. I complained a little, feeling sticky and hot in my black dress. The pyre was white and gold, Buddhist funerary colors. The monks carefully stoked the fire. They prayed, a sharp chant like the buzzing motor of a water bus on the Chao Praya River. My great aunt and second cousins stood around the growing flames. I was envious of their white clothes and cloth parasols. The fire grew, starving and wild, charring and eating at the white casket. The stilts that held up the crown of the funerary pyre collapsed in on themselves with an awesome crash. The swooping golden eaves, like the graceful neck of a naga, and the sharp gold spades in the shape of sacred fig leaves tumbled into the burning pile.

“Ai, look away,” my mom whispered to me. But it was too late; the fire consumed. In the flames I could see the outline of the skeletal corpse burning away, releasing his soul from its vessel to be reincarnated.

Later, my great aunt will receive a tooth that survived the cremation as a gift from the temple.

This ceremony starts and I’m sitting in the second row, right behind the tissue box. I angle myself so I appear to be facing the casket but use my dad’s head to block the view.

We asked for the same chaplain who officiated Grandma’s service in 2021. I’m not sure grandpa has been to church in decades. The chaplain is in his 60s, and he’s wearing a clergy collar and a white stole. He holds a small leather-bound Bible in his right hand; candy-colored Post-it notes stick out of it like rainbow tassels. I wonder how many funerals he does a week.

“And Jesus Christ told us that in his Father’s house there are many mansions. Jesus is preparing a place for Peter, an eternal house, not built by human hands.” I don’t remember Jesus being mentioned this often in Grandma’s ceremony. “And when you look to the world and see Peter in the breeze or in the morning air—” For a moment I think there will be relief from all the Jesus talk. “—know that he is already with Jesus and Joyce in the city that is to come. For he has returned, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

I stand outside the funeral home waiting for the procession to begin. The funeral home is a large, colonial, Pennsylvanian stone house and sits not two hundred feet from the Delaware River. There are so many stone buildings in PA. I wonder why; I bet grandpa would’ve known. Mom comes to stand by me.

“Your dad went all out—I didn’t know you could hire bagpipers for funerals.”

“Hmm, it’s how my great-grandparents met—I think—great-grandma was a highland sword dancer; she took bagpiping lessons from great-grandpa.”

I stand by the car and stare across the river at New Jersey, and it starts to rain in an appropriately funerary manner.

I visited grandpa two days before he passed. The first night in Pennsylvania I was afflicted with this awful headache. I foraged the house, searching for pain relief meds when I saw them. It’s been years since she passed, but there they were, two pairs of small, pink orthopedic sneakers, a cut of spring tulips left on the bottom shelf of the mud room. They must’ve been moved because they weren’t by the front door; maybe it would have been ghoulish to keep them there. Maybe one of us would have thrown them out. I wonder if grandpa moved them, unwilling to see them every day but unwilling to throw them away. I moved away from the stinging scene in the mud room, searching for relief.

In my grandfather’s house there are many rooms, rooms that hold TVs that no longer work, extra mattresses that create lean-tos in the living room. In his driveway there is a red Ford Probe, sun bleached and flat-tired, that he swore he’d fix one day. There is a side table that contains 120 Celtic and bagpiping records, but no record player. There is a chest of drawers filled with plastic bags, and there are bins filled with birthday cards. Under his bed there is a wooden board screwed into the box springs. I open a hallway closet, and there are storage boxes labeled “makeup” and “baking” and others with lacy, easter-colored socks. My headache deepens. I was just trying to find some meds.

“Good afternoon and welcome to the Washington Crossing National Cemetery. At this time military honors will be rendered. There will be a three-volley salute. Please prepare yourselves for loud rifle fire.” The man speaking is in his thirties, has a military cut, and is wearing slacks with no socks. We’re seated on wrought-iron benches in a gazebo. I look behind us at the cemetery; each tombstone is perfectly equidistant from the next like an orchard of marble thumbs that peek out from the earth, and they cover the two hundred acres of hills like halftone print. The wind picks up, the rain bearing down. Grandpa’s casket—now thankfully closed—is draped in a heavy American flag. It’s been moved against the only wall in the structure. The wall is made of the limestone, with circular gold plaques of each branch of the military lined up above him.

Fifty feet to my left three sailors in dress whites hold rifles. On a signal, they aim at the sky and fire, aim and fire, and fire. Gunfire is simultaneously much louder and much more disappointing than I imagined.

Two of the sailors fold the flag lengthwise, stripes over stars, and then lengthwise, stars visible, and then in triangles, and triangles, again, and again. Their white gloves whisper against the thick cotton of the flag, until all that’s left is a tricorn of stars. “On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Navy, and a grateful nation, please accept this—” One of the sailors kneels in front of my dad, a proposal of spent cartridges and Ol’ Glory “—a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”

The bagpiper begins to play. He stands ten feet closer to us than the riflemen; he’s wearing highland dress. I twist my hands in the spaces between the cold metal of the bench as the opening notes of “Auld Lang Syne” play, and I remember Thanksgiving dinners at the Pennsylvania house, the dining table dressed up in a white tablecloth stained with decades of Thanksgivings. “We will say the Selkirk Grace,” Grandpa would say, “as written by the Poet Laureate of Scotland, Robert Burns.”

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be Thankit!

I have air but cannot breathe. A cool wind cuts through the gazebo.

For auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne.

My hair paddles in the burn of my tears. My mouth is salty. The sharp, buzzing chant of the pipes close out.

And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

“It was a good service,” Dad says. He looks to me. “It was good.”

My face is tacky and cold where my tears have dried. “Do you want me to do something like that for you? A military funeral?”

“No, no way. You should plant me under a tree or something. I hate open casket funerals.”

“But the bagpipes?”

“Yeah, do the bagpipes.”

A newsletter came in the mail in the fall of 1993.

On the front page of these stapled mimeographed pages, there was a photo of a boy in a wheelchair with a trophy from Challenger Baseball, Little League’s program for kids with disabilities.

Ten-year-old Thomas held the newsletter in his hands and examined the picture, his head tilted forward, his gaze focused, light brown hair framing his face. He sat in the middle of our kitchen in his new wheelchair, a lightweight manual one in his favorite color, blue. Autumn sun poured in through the glass doors and bathed his slight frame.

“I want that,” he said, blue eyes gleaming, as he drew his gaze away from the photo and looked up at me.

Nine, ten, eleven… these were tough years for my son, when he started rapidly losing his abilities. His diagnosis at age five with Ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T), a debilitating neurological condition, shattered his parents’ hearts, and changed the trajectory of all of our lives. His early development, slightly off, now deteriorated. At the time, only two doctors, one on each coast, were experts; one had put together this newsletter for parents to share coping tips.

Stumbling blindly on our own, we had recently welcomed a service dog, Breezy. She was not a panacea. Thomas could not walk independently with the golden retriever’s support; he needed an adult prop on the other side. He began to use the wheelchair. He cried. He railed.

“I hate myself,” he told me as he lost the ability to walk, to write, and to tie his shoes. I sat on his bed next to him. “I’m dirt. I wish I’d never been born.”

“I love you” was all I could think of to say, and drew him into my arms. “I love that you were born. I love how brave and determined and patient you are. I love what a good friend and brother and son you are. But I don’t like this condition that is giving you such a hard time.”

One afternoon, I sat on the wicker loveseat in our kitchen, one arm around a bawling Thomas on one side and the other around his crying younger sister on the other.

“I’m not equipped,” I moaned inwardly. But what about Challenger? I didn’t know anything about baseball, but maybe it was just what we needed.

In those pre-Internet days, I picked up the phone. We did not have Challenger or even Little League locally. We would have to find our own way. Thomas’ physical therapist Leslie was all in. We started recruiting. We needed everything—sponsors, coaches, players, buddies to help them, and a field.

I went to the Greenfield town hall to meet the Recreation Director. I explained our idea for kids with disabilities to play ball with the help of peer buddies.

“Is there a field that we could use?”

“Yes,” he said. “We have a field open at the Middle School. You can play there.” He smiled from behind a cluttered desk in his small upstairs office. “We can take this on as a town program, if you want.”

I hurried home to report to Thomas.

“We’re on!” I said. “I’m so happy, I could give the Rec Director a kiss!”

“You can’t,” said Thomas, folding his arms across his chest.

“Why not?” I said, surprised by his insistence.

“Your lips are taken.”

The Recorder newspaper ran a front-page story with a photo of Thomas sitting cross-legged on the ground, baseball cap turned backwards, Breezy by his side. “He really wants to play baseball,” said the article.

“If you want to join, you have to be willing to get dirty,” Thomas said.

Buddy Baseball’s first season in the dirt was the spring of 1994.

Our team included players in wheelchairs, with walkers, with visual impairments, and with developmental disabilities. Buddies were friends, siblings, neighbors. Thomas’s sister Victoria, six, was buddy to a girl her age in a wheelchair.

We split into two teams and played against each other.

Thomas at bat was all concentration. Several pitches flew through his swing; we didn’t count strikes. Then he connected with a force so strong that his wheelchair rocked back and forth. The ball bounced towards second base. His buddy Joel sprang into action and pushed the wheelchair as fast as he could, Thomas grinning, eyes on first base.

“Safe!”

On our last Saturday, we played at the tree-lined Green River swim area and had a pizza party and awards ceremony. Thomas clutched his gold statue of a batter on a “Buddy Baseball” stand. His eyes were wide and his smile wider, while his service dog wagged by his side and Joel danced and whooped.

Buddy Baseball celebrated its 30th birthday last year. I’ve coached every year since it started. That first season I ended up having to deal with a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. At Buddy Baseball, my fear for my health and my son’s, the fear I might die and leave my children behind, was stilled.

Thomas played on, in later years as emeritus with “Founder” on the back of his T-shirt. He swung the bat through his own chemo for two bouts of cancer, and not long after our 22nd season ended, his disease caught up with him. He died peacefully, age 34, family and dog at his side. His was a remarkable life, one that earned him Greenfield Community College’s Distinguished Alumni Award. After GCC he graduated from UMass, made short personal videos about his life with physical disabilities, and presented Life in a Wheelchair, a disability awareness program, in local schools. But he dreamed he could marry, play soccer, turn his action movie script into a Hollywood blockbuster—and drive a red Ferrari.

Grieving terribly, I wondered if I could return to Buddy Baseball. It is Thomas’ legacy. I wanted to keep it going.

The first Saturday of the season I arrived at the field with trepidation. A longtime player in a wheelchair said, “I miss Tom. But I think he’s here in spirit.”

“I do, too,” I replied, “I feel him, too.”

I noticed a mother on the field running after two young children—new players, who zipped around in small, motorized wheelchairs. The mom called to them, laughing and encouraging as they squealed in delight. As they neared me, she looked up. In that instant, I saw myself. I saw her bright face, the exuberant joy, the knowledge that every moment was so dear, the love for these precious beings whose lives and futures were so challenged, and I recognized that that was how I had lived my whole life with Thomas. That was my face and my laughter and my full-to-breaking heart.

At 10:00 PM the underground subway platform was tightly packed with Red Sox fans.

It would take several trains arriving to clear the mass of people wanting to go home after a Sox victory. In the shadows at the far end of the platform, where the track disappears into a dark, curving void, I noticed two young men.

They were college freshmen or sophomores, at most. One of them, wearing a Northeastern sweatshirt, was so drunk that his friend was holding him up while struggling to keep him from staggering off the raised platform onto the tracks. Waiting passengers moved away from the young men, packing themselves against each other toward the opposite end of the platform.

Despite their obvious revulsion, none of the onlookers could drag their eyes away from the unfolding drama. In nonsensical fits and starts Northeastern kept struggling to break free of his friend. The sober man was losing the battle of keeping his friend safe. I looked at my spouse and said, “I’ll be right back.” She grabbed my wrist and said, “This is dangerous. You could get hurt. Just stay here.” “I can’t do that,” I replied and left my wife’s side to help keep this kid out of harm’s way. Just as I grasped Northeastern’s shoulders, he began to vomit, depositing an alcohol-and-Fenway-Frank slurry onto the cement, my shoes and pants, and his friend’s shoes and pants. Wide-eyed waiting passengers moved even further away, reacting as if a nuclear weapon had detonated instead of an inebriated college kid retching after a baseball game.

Two Massachusetts Bay Transportation Police Officers arrived on the platform as an inbound train’s headlights lit the tunnel. The burly officers flanked Northeastern, grasped his arms, and pulled him away from the edge of the platform.

When I rejoined my wife, she looked at my vomit-soaked shoes and pants, then looked into my eyes and asked why I felt I needed to get involved helping Northeastern. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my 33-year AA medallion.

I held it in my open palm. I was already sober when I met my wife; she has never seen me drunk.

“Because I am him,” I answered.

March: to tramp, trudge, protest, picket, advance, progress, step-out, strut, swagger

JANUARY 21, 2017; THE CROWD is so jammed together that rocking foot-to-foot is difficult. On tiptoes, pink pussy hats blended the sea of heads into lilac, interspersed with rainbow signs:

I Am Very Upset; Just No; Get your filthy laws off my silky drawers; I’ve Seen Sturdier Cabinets at Ikea; Put Government Under the Microscope; Climate is Changing Why Aren’t We?; There Is No PLANet B; Celebrate Diversity; Ya Basta de Discriminacion; Girls Just Wanna Have FUNdamental Rights; The Future is Nasty; Men of Quality don’t Fear Equality; Womens’ Place is in The Revolution. We Can Do It. We The People.

There are no edges to this crowd. Everyone’s focus is on a stage we can’t see, speakers we can barely hear. We vibrate to the roars of the crowd and thousands of hands fluttering in the air. Helicopters overhead film the human sea covering Boston Common – a place older than the Constitution, one speaker reminds us.

I hear a yell and turned to see my six-foot, 13-year-old daughter drop her “LGBTQ Against BiGotry” sign and slide to the ground, face grey and eyes dilated. Someone, somehow, gets a message to the medics. An impossible isle opens, and we carry her through standing waves of people to the medical van. The waves crashed together behind us as we march through: immigrant father, migraineur eldest daughter, my veterinarian sister, our pirate librarian, me, and the medics carrying my youngest. Strangers pat my back. That is my Women’s March. That is the crowd of diverse, peaceful, concerned people who are also immigrants, reliant on health care, professional women, fathers of daughters, LGBTQ community, and so many others concerned about their endangered human rights and the environment.

My daughter rallies, and we struggle through the crowd to the Beacon Hill Bistro to watch what the helicopters see on CNN. Pulling back allows us to see our lilac sea repeated in DC, Chicago, Denver, New York, Austin, LA.

Soon images are coming in from the entire nation. Scenes of smaller (sometimes braver) protests flash from across the planet. Seven continents, including climate scientists in the Antarctic: “Penguins for Peace,” “Seals for Science.” The newscaster finally returns to a Boston Commons that now looked like a snake swallowing its tail as talks end and the March tries to begin along a route already overflowing with people.

My daughter wants to MARCH again, so we dive back into the crowd until we hit the roadblock of Beacon Street where no one is moving at all. Miraculously, we spot her tall sister alongside my unmistakable mustachioed husband in his homemade pink pussy hat bulling through the crowd like a dad making way for his daughters. And the March finally gathers momentum in a swaggering, strutting progress of 170,000, in a national movement of 3 million, in a world that shows its solidarity – and we along with them.

My dad and stepmom run a motel in upstate New York.

It is not for the upper crust. It is more for the pizza crust.

In the summer my dad would host a cookout and invite everyone.

One of the guys that Dad was friends with took me with him to the Price Chopper to get some stuff for the party.

He put a few huge steaks in the basket. I can’t recall what all else, but those few huge steaks with the bone still in.

While we were walking the aisles, he told me that he was “part Indian” and said he was a Powass Indian, as in po’ ass…as in…no money.

It would not likely have been a memorable enough joke were it not for the next scene, in the register lane.

The cashier and the person behind us showed us substantial disdain and disgust when the high cost of those steaks was paid with brightly colored food stamps.

He didn’t seem embarrassed, but I was. I knew how to “be poor” and not draw the ire of wealthier neighbors who all know that they are subsidizing our dinner.

As we were walking out, he says to me, “They see me buying fancy steaks with food stamps and they think, This is the problem with our country, free handouts to lazy bums, and they eat better than we do. But what they miss is that I’ve been eating plain noodles and canned beans for the past month so that I could buy these steaks to share at this party, where I know others would not otherwise ever get the opportunity to eat this.”

He wasn’t buying them for himself even.

We gotta stop judging. It sounds fine to say, “No candy or soda with food stamps.” But what about the birthday party, the graduation, the quinceañera, the bar mitzvah?

How about you mind your own business and leave poor folks alone. It’s hard enough being poor.