A Boy's Dream

"Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once - the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains."-- "Crash" Davis, "Bull Durham"

When I was about 7 or 8 years old, around 1968-1969, the baseball bug bit me. My family lived in Albany Park, a very ethnically mixed neighborhood on Chicago's north side. My friends in the neighborhood were a grab bag of ethnicities, nationalities and religions. Until just a few years before, Albany Park was populated mostly by Jewish people, mostly of Russian heritage. As they began the move to the suburbs-- a pattern that has remained to this day in this neighborhood no matter the ethnic groups-- new groups were moving in: baptists from Appalachia, Maronites from Lebanon, Irish, Hungarians, Polish and the first few Hispanic people. You name it, we had it

The one thing we all had in common was baseball. Our own little form of baseball. We played in the alley with a deflated playground ball-- it was the great leveler. The difference between the greatest hitter and the worst was pretty narrow. And speaking of narrow, we played in an alley. Our bases were utility poles, cracks in the concrete and by-the-way, watch out for the dogshit!

By 1971, my family had followed the Great American pattern that was emerging, and had moved to the suburbs for a split-level ranch and better schools. But I still loved baseball. In September of 1971-- specifically, September 11, 1971, I finally went to my first baseball game. It was my beloved Cubs versus the St. Louis Cardinals. 

I remember, to this day, nearly 43 years later, so much about the game. Juan Pizzaro pitched for the Cubs. Joe Torre, who was usually a catcher, was playing third base. Lou Brock, whom the Cubs had traded in 1964 to the Cardinal for pitcher Ernie Broglio, in what is considered to one of the worst and most lopsided trades in baseball history, was playing for the Cardinals. In all, I saw four future Hall of Famers play that day-- Billy Williams and Ron Santo for the Cubs, and Lou Brock and Joe Torre for the Cards. To my lasting regret, another future Hall of Famer, "Mr. Cub," Ernie Banks, was not playing that day; he retired about two weeks later. 

But my most memorable moment came with a player who I greatly admired-- a guy who was never going to make it into the Hall of Fame: Paul Popovich. 

Popovich had been one of the few bright spots in the infamous and heartbreaking end of the 1969 Cubs season. He was nicknamed "Supersub" for his ability to fill in ably at any infield position. He was only a lifetime .233 hitter, but he seemed to have a knack for getting the "clutch" hits-- hits right when they were badly needed. 

Popovich hit 14 home runs over his entire career (mostly with the Cubs) from 1964 to 1975. One of those home runs was that day, in the course of the Cubs' 7-0 victory: it was the one and only grand slam that Popovich hit in his career.

I never got to play little league ball, though I dreamed, as a little boy, of playing in the Bigs and hitting a grand slam. Instead, I grew up, went to college, moved back into the city and became a teacher, and then a nurse, and raised a son who is a baseball fan. We saw many games at Wrigley and he played six years of little league, something I hadn't gotten to do. He even pitched in his league championship his last year. He's 20 now, and in college. He told me a couple of days ago that he considers that pitching in the little league championship when he was in eighth grade to be the greatest memory of his childhood. 

A couple of weeks ago, the great pitcher Greg Maddux was inaugurated into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I saw him pitch many times, and during Maddux' second stint with the Cubs, my son saw him pitch. But for every Greg Maddux, there are hundreds of Paul Popoviches-- journeyman players who are talented and hard-working enough to make it to the major leagues, but who will never make it to the Hall. And for every Paul Popovich, there are 1000 little boys who can only dream of making it to "the show." To me, to see Paul Popovich living his dream-- and mine-- that afternoon in 1971, that will always be my favorite moment I ever witnessed in baseball. Except, of course, seeing my boy pitch in a little league championship.

Lean In

This weekend, my wife, my son and I went up to a reunion that my wife's family has every three years. At some point during the drive back, my son asked me about this blog, pointing out I hadn't written in it in a while.

Truth is that I had been planning for the last couple of weeks to resume posting. I missed it.

One of the big reasons I had slowed to a near stop in the writing was exhaustion. A career change, a move, getting a kid off to college, and then a couple of years of working as much overtime as I could stand-- I was fried most days, and still am. Still, I miss blogging more than I miss the rest.

So, anybody who reads this blog regularly knows, I changed careers. After getting laid off a teaching job that I just loved, I decided to go where the work was-- the healthcare profession. After flirting with the idea of becoming a pharmacist, a friend who was studying to be a nurse (and whom I took prereq classes with) pointed out that even if I went through with the plans to go to pharmacy school-- an unlikely event as it turned out, since there's only one in Chicago-- I'd be done with it around the time my younger child was done with college. The whole point was to be in a position to pay for the lion's share of my kids' college.

I was fortunate to get into the RN program of one of the Chicago City Colleges. Not only did it have a great reputation, it was relatively cheap.

Even so, the Recession started not long after I began the process. And then my wife was laid off her job the month I started nursing school.

She and I had a long discussion over a few glasses of wine one night about what we were going to do. We decided to tough it out and for me to stay in the program.

She worked a series of jobs, after a stint on unemployment, and I continued to work full time at a waitering job. I had to buck up, lean in, and know that I could sleep when I was done with nursing school.

I finished nursing school on my 50th birthday. My wife and kids threw a marvelous party. Most of my closest friends were there, including a surprise guest-- my old friend Viktor Zeitgeist, who flew in from Seattle on a redeye to be there. My mother came in for it as well.

I was fortunate to get a job ridiculously quickly. It was with the biggest dialysis company in the world. I knew next to nothing about dialysis; we'd talked about it probably all of ten minutes of nursing school.

I started training in early August of 2011. I bonded quickly with two guys in the class, Neal and Brent, who, like me, were middle-aged guys who were changing careers.

Brent had a kid in college, and I had one who was going to be there soon. I had a bunch of debts to take care of-- in order for me to finish nursing school, we'd done a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul. I had to take care of that.

In August of 2012, Brent, Neal and I sent one another texts caustically congratulating one another on our one-year anniversary with the company. We'd already grown a little weary of the job. It was a company in chaos. Still, the chaos resulted in a lot of overtime for Brent and I, so we dealt with it.

The next day I got a text from a co-worker about Brent; he was in the hospital. He'd collapsed-- a possible heart attack. I was a little incredulous. He was only 42.

I got ahold of his girlfriend's number. She told me he had collapsed at home. As it turned out, he'd had a brain aneurysm. At her request, Neal and I drove to the hospital to see Brent. We checked him for pupillary response-- we shone a light in his eyes to see if the pupils responded. None. He was intubated, breathing artificially, and his heart was beating, but he was dead.

We went to his funeral a couple of days later. His girlfriend and I have become close friends since then. Shared grief has a way of doing that. Neal eventually took a job at a hospital, but we've stayed in touch as well.

Nearly two years later, I'm still with that company. I've grown wearier of the job. Four managers in 3 years. Still lots of chaos, but still lots of overtime.

So now my son is half way done with college. My daughter will be a senior in high school this year. There will be a year where we have two kids in college. My daughter's birth father will apparently help some, but it's still going to be a strain.

But we've dealt with a lot tougher situations. As I look back at going to nursing school, and how it's worked out, I'm satisfied; the plan worked.

I look forward to the day I can move on to my next nursing job. Most of the people I treat should really not be alive. I'd like to be working with people who are going to recover. But for now, this is what's best for my family. I'll continue to lean in, and finish what I started. 

The Absence

The last few years, my posting in this blog has been sporadic. I plead fatigue.

Back in June of 2006, I had what was the worst week of my life. I had known that I was going to be laid off my job as a sixth grade teacher. It was my dream job; sixth grade in a mostly-Latino blue collar suburb of Chicago. The kids, their parents, my co-workers-- they were awesome. The Principal-- not so much. She took an Ahab-like hatred toward me that was inexplicable. Co-workers mused that I perhaps reminded her of an old boyfriend. As the final day of that job approached, I worried about the future. I knew that it was unlikely that I'd find a teaching job that I loved that much.

Then, it grew worse. I got a call from my parents. My father's doctor was pretty certain that my father had cancer. He was to undergo an operation that would determine this and if he had it (he did, as it turned out), do what could be done to take it out.

As I waited out the end of the job I loved, and my father going under the knife, I received news that was unbelievable. My friend Mark, a guy I've met when I was 22 years old, in college, had been found shot to death in front of his home.

To paraphrase Ken Kesey, who was speaking of the accidental death of his son in an auto accident, I felt like my cells were exploding.

A few days later, my father underwent surgery-- successful, as it turned out-- to remove the tumor in his gut. A few weeks later, an old teaching colleague, from when I was teaching on Chicago's tough West Side, called and asked if I'd teach at the school she was working at-- a program to get young adults who had dropped out of high school back into school and get them a diploma, allowing them to move on with life. I accepted.

This job, while tough, was incredibly therapeutic. It allowed me to work with young adults who were headed toward a bad end to get off that path.

While I worked this job, I considered my long-term future. As much as I loved teaching, I was finding the opportunities becoming more and more limited-- even before the 2008 economic cataclysm. I made the decision to go toward a field where jobs were increasing (even before the ACA)-- the health field. 

Artifacts

This summer, I've been trying to winnow down some of my stuff. As hard as I try to reduce my belongings, they seem to breed when I'm not looking. 

Loose Ends

A couple of days ago, someone on my Facebook feed posted that it had been 35 years since Devo made their first appearance on Saturday Night Live, playing a great cover of the Rolling Stones song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." I smiled, remembering that I had seen that performance; I was watching it with my high school best friend Cindy. We were floored by it, and were inspired. With the help of her mother, we made approximations of the Devo anti-radiation suits in time for Halloween a couple of weeks later.



This was made even happier that Cindy and I had reconnected after ten years. It turned out that she and her partner had moved. My friend has a fairly common name, so my efforts to track her down were hampered by that. It occurred to me to pair the search with the name of her life partner, which gave me success, though I didn't realize it. I had left them a message, then missed when they called me, thanks to my insane work schedule. A couple of months ago, she finally reached me. Happily, it turns out that she's moving back to the area where we grew up in (I never left) with her partner and their baby daughter. We all got together, going to the zoo. I was amused that she is so much the same; she still overschedules, still overplans and is still a delight as a person.

I am, obviously, a person who doesn't like loose ends. I am one who keeps friendships up over years, decades. My three closest friends are people I met over 30 years ago. I used to write a lot of letters. Now Facebook and cheap long distance helps make up for the fact that I don't have as much time and energy to write letters.

My unease with loose ends does have its downside. Namely, loose ends.

In my mid-twenties, I roomed with a guy I worked with who with whom I had become good friends with. Chris and I could probably not have been more opposite. I'm straight, he was gay. He grew up in the same neighborhood on the south side that the President lived in when he was still here in Chicago; I grew up on the north side. He was racially mixed-- his dad was black, mom white (I'm white). Yet, after that stuff, we were still close friends. We loved to talk politics. We both loved to get out and party (until he stopped drinking). We kept in touch for a long time, and got together often, even after we weren't rooming together. When my son was born, it became harder for me to keep in touch. I was busy raising a kid and working, and eventually school, when I went back to school to become a teacher.

Over the last 7 or 8 years, I've tried to contact him. His sister is married to a pretty well-known political writer, and I've messaged both him and his sister trying to get in touch with him. My fear is that the news is bad; he was treated for depression at times-- he'd been the victim of a gay-bashing when he was in college that was horrific. He was pistol-whipped; the gun went off and grazed the back of his head. He was almost certainly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I fear for the worst, but keep hoping that like my searches for my friend Cindy, I'll get good news.

Another guy is Yomi Martin. I met him in the early nineties when he was dating a co-worker. He and her split up, but he was the one I stayed friends with. He was one of the most intelligent and interesting people I've had the pleasure to meet. He was only 21 or 22 when we met, but he and a couple of friends had already published an issue of a comic book. I always enjoyed talking to him about art, life, women, comic books, science fiction, and whatever else concerned us.

Searching for him is complicated by the fact that he shares a name with a popular clothing designer. I still search a few times a year, crossing his name with comic books and graphic novels, assuming that he's maintained an interest in that field. Still, I have fears with him too; Chicago is a dangerous place for a young African-American male. I choose to think that he just ended up in another geographic location and that I just haven't cracked the code for finding him.

I haven't given up on Chris and Yomi. At times, I considered giving up on Cindy, and another friend, Jamie, but finally connected with both of them. Because, you see, not only am I a person that doesn't like loose ends: I'm a person who values the people I've shared this life with and someone who's stubborn as hell.

Loose Ends

In high school, I became close friends with a young woman who ended up moving west after we graduated. She and I maintained a close friendship, but distance and time started fading that friendship. A few weeks ago, I got a call from her; she and her partner and their young daughter were moving back to the Chicago area. We spent a day 

The Snows of Kilamanjaro

When I was a freshman in college, in 1979, I had to read Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilamanjaro" for an English class. To be honest, the book made no impact with me. The random flow of the narrator's memories as he dies didn't register with me.

A few months ago, I was revisiting the story in my head, and realized that I now get, at the age of 52, what I didn't get when I was 18.

Twenty years ago this summer, I got the news that I was going to become a parent. It was not expected-- I had broken off a relationship with the woman a few weeks before-- nor particularly desired. I felt like I would be a shitty parent, and I had other plans. In fact, I had planned to spent that summer, the summer of 1993, working only one job (I usually worked 2) and try to figure out the next couple of steps in my life.

Back in my younger days, I used to hang out at the Gingerman Tavern here in Chicago with a guy named Michael. He was one of the nicest and most interesting people I've met in my life. He used to have a tagline on his email, one that's been attributed to a number of people, "Do you want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans." Truer words were never spoken. The following spring, in 1994, my son was born. I took to parenthood like a fish to water. I just fell in love with parenting, and in particular, this little pip of a guy who was now my responsibility for at least 18 years.

I ended up splitting with his mother, but shared custody of him. I was married and divorced twice, and finally tried marriage a third time, this time with a woman who already had a child. My stepdaughter and I hit it off pretty quickly, partly because her birth father doesn't seem to quite get the hang of parenting.


My son is home for his summer break from college for a few more days. My daughter is on a college tour today with my wife. It really hit me this morning-- our journey raising children is nearly done.

I had the realization recently that I now get Hemingway's book. There are a million little memories from a lifetime that come flooding back with a moment's reflection.

The picture to the right, of my kids riding bicycles together is one of them. I've done a lot of things in my life, good and bad. I've gotten four college degrees, loved some wonderful women, made some great friendships-- but one of the most important things I think I've ever done is taught two kids how to ride a bicycle.

I'll never forget seeing my son take his first steps. It was at a party we had for his first birthday. I was still living with his mother; both families were at the party. For a couple of weeks, he'd been walking holding onto furniture. He was sitting in the middle of the living room, when he suddenly stood up and walked over to one of his grandmothers (I cannot, for the life of me, remember if it was her mother or mine).

I got my stepdaughter when she was 8, so I missed the first words, first steps, etc. Our first moment, when we realized that we were going to get on just fine, was, ironically, when I was dropping her off for a visit with her birth father. I had my Ipod plugged into the car stereo, and the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" came on. She waited a minute before she went into her father's house in order to sing the song along with me; it was one of her favorites, and mine. Another time, when I was picking her up from school, Jim Carroll's song "People Who Died" came up on the shuffle. We sang along to it then, and always do when it comes up on either of our Ipods or on satellite radio. We're just sentimental that way...

Other moments from a couple of childhoods that are stored in my memory: my son walking around with an enormous stuffed "Jimmy Neutron."  My daughter asking about the possibility bats flying out of a lighting fixture in her bedroom. My son spending the better part of an afternoon looking for secret passageways in our home. Taking both of them to see Ursula Bielski, who writes about Chicago ghost stories. My son's Little League games. Every play I've seen my daughter perform in. Dozens of Monopoly and Settlers of Catan games.

But beyond the big stuff, there are a thousand little memories with each of them. As I've watched them grow into intelligent, capable and interesting adults, I've come to realize that they'll remember bits and pieces of their childhoods, but a lot of it will be locked up solely in the recesses of my memory. And when I take my leave, those memories will go away with me. Like with Hemingway's adventurer in the book, those memories will pass like ghosts before me until they and I fade. Such is the ephemeral, sad and beautiful truth of our existence. 

The Snows of Kilamanjaro