I hate wearing new shoes and I’m willing to bet that 99.999% of the male population does too. They never feel right and by the end of the day you’re walking like Donald Duck after sniffing glue and eating one too many Skittles. Taste the rainbow of discomfort. The only footwear that feels right to me the first time I wear them has been (and always will be) sneakers. I didn’t wear sneakers today. I wore shoes. New shoes. Uncomfortable and unbroken-in shoes. Evil, nasty monster shoes that should be thrown into the footwear abyss where all the bad shoes go. Actually, they were a pair of Timberland casuals, a gift from my mother-in-law that can’t say no to anything 70% off, although sometimes I wish she would. I love her anyway. But my feet felt like two squishy blisters about to pop as I walked to the train. Even the people driving on Boylston looked at me, concerned, as if to say, “Hey, man, you look like you gotta take a crap or something!” As I limped to South Station, I began thinking about walking in my father’s shoes, not theoretically but realistically. I would put on his oxblood wingtips that were 6 sizes too big and waddle around the living room tripping on things while making believe I was him. Everyone would get their chuckle and it would be bedtime for Mick. I liked going into my father’s closet in the hallway. It had all of his ‘stuff’ in it and I could get lost for hours. In the back of my mind I can see the large glass pickle jar filled with change. It was in the shape of an actual pickle barrel and it weighed about 200 lbs (or 90.718474 kilos) ;) I wonder when he cashed those coins in? It was probably after I’d lost interest in the closet and moved on to collecting pollywogs in a rusty pail underneath the back deck. There was all kinds of stuff in that closet: old army boots, belts that had fallen off their hooks that he forgot he even had, an empty ‘Tootsie Roll’ bank that served no purpose whatsoever and a shoebox filled with brushes, polish and stained rags. If I could have bottled the smell of his closet, I would have. The thing I liked best about my father’s closet was the feeling of comfort that it gave me as I sat there surrounded by his stuff. My world was safe as I sat there on the closet floor even when he wasn’t home. These days I find myself missing the ‘safety’ that was him. When my mother and father were well I always felt I had that net stretched out below me should ever I fall, not that I would ever use it. I just liked knowing it was there. The net disappeared many years ago and I really miss the feeling of calm that it gave to me. For now, I’ll choose to cherish the memories of that special closet in the hallway that seems light years away. Maybe it’s not that far away after all. As I finish writing this post I can see snow falling outside the dark kitchen windows and it’s only October 15th. Maybe it’s my mother and father’s way of telling me that I now have my own net to tend to. They always had a way with words . . .

I am not, I repeat, not a morning person. Never have been, never will. Ask my wife. Ask my kids. Hell, ask Bill the conductor on the 6:30am train I take into Boston. He checks my ticket and says, “Have a nice nap, sir.” Bill would honestly say, “Definitely NOT a morning person.” (*should be, “Not a person at all. He’s more of a thing at this time of the morning.”) Some of you are ‘morning people’, happy, cheerful and ready to greet the new day with vim and vigor. Sorry, you people suck. Vermin. You probably do 800 sit ups before your first cup of coffee too, right? “Good Morning!” If this phrase is spoken to me and shouted from the fiddler on the rooftops with verve and effervescent happiness, it makes me want to do one thing: punch the face that’s brave and stupid enough to utter it. My God, what are you thinking? I’m still sleeping for Christ’s sake and you are seriously getting on my nerves. I need about 4 hours to wake up. Why the hell can’t you ‘roosters’ get that? I need coffee, juice and a personal five-minute sitdown on the porcelain throne before someone thrusts the ‘happy’ shit on me, okay? Ease the hell up, all you happy morning people. You’re messing with my head. I just choose to burn the candle at the other end (as I do a blog post at midnight). You, on the other hand, have been sleeping for 3 hours. But do I call you and say, How are Ya! Good Evening! No. I don’t. I may send a totally incoherent email or two but that’s another story. We all have trolls inside of us that make us act as we do. You morning people have Richard Simmons. Us nighthawks? We have Ed Asner (Lou Grant) from the Mary Tyler Moore show and he hasn’t taken a decent shit in 2 years. (click on Lou up above for a classic MTM moment) Take two steps back until my green light comes on, okay? That’s all I’m saying. This morning I poured orange juice into my coffee. Mr. Grant was not real impressed. I’ll try again tomorrow morning but it will probably be the same. Epic Michael Fail. My brain is chemically challenged in the morning is all. As Huey Lewis once sang, “I want a new drug . . . “

There are things that happen in our lives that occasionally defy space, time, gravity and logic. While we experience these types of phenomena on a daily basis we are sometimes too busy to see and embrace it. There are two areas that require attention in my backyard: the lawn and the flowers. I generally mow the lawn while Pamela tends to the flowers. The flowerpots lining the yard and hanging from the shed looked especially good this year but the garden looked like some fat lady sat on it. The poor appearance of the garden had something to do with the amount of rainfall we had in June. It rained 28 days out of 30 and the garden flowers suffered. Pamela hates weeds and is constantly plucking them from the garden and the mulch that surrounds the outside of the yard. I tell you this so you understand that she has a keen awareness of all things growing in the backyard. As I said before, all of the Cape Cod goodbyes were difficult but nothing could have prepared me for August 2nd, the day Maureen and Mark left. Pamela & Hannah went with me to the airport that afternoon. The skies were greyslate over Boston and the tone in the truck was a bit somber compared to the first drive to the Cape two very short weeks ago. We somehow managed the ‘goodbyes’ and went our separate ways, more difficult than I ever could have imagined. I was walking and wearing my Akubra, my arm around Pamela. She took my arm and placed it over Hannah’s shoulder who was hurting more than Pamela. This would be our hardest and saddest goodbye. We got home and tried to keep busy straightening up and getting the house back in order for the work week ahead. I poured a few fingers of Maker’s Mark and made Pamela a Rum Swizzle. I was in the kitchen on my laptop when I heard Pamela yell from the backyard, “Hey Michael! Come here!” She was standing by the enormous hostas (so big I call them Jimmy Hostas) staring at the ground. “Look at those two flowers.” “Yeah,” I said, in that low to high tone I use when questioning her. “They weren’t there before. I swear. I’ve never seen them.” “Then how did they get there,” I asked. “They’re Impatiens. They need to be planted.” “And you didn’t plant them?” I asked. “Nope.” She got teary and said, “It’s Maureen and Mark. They didn’t want to leave. They didn‘t.” What do you say to a woman crying over two mysterious flowers that have grown out of nowhere? You don’t argue, for one thing. You shake your head, agree, and give her a huge hug. As a dear friend of mine once said of wonderful and mysterious things in this life, “Sometimes, it just is.” I’m also thinking that those plant roots run quite deep. Now that’s something I can definitely relate to . . .

Sarah and I went to visit my father yesterday to feed him lunch and sit with him for a while. Lately, he’s been overly emotional for reasons I may never be privy to. The minute he saw us, he broke down completely. I feel terrible saying it but I’ve almost gotten used to it now. I had to. My empathy for him that once seemed to be an impossibility to avoid feeling has now turned into an acceptance of sorts that boggles my mind. He was in the rec room that overlooks the city waiting to be fed. I wheeled him to his room where I know it’s quiet and had Sarah get his lunch. He’s a finicky eater these days around everyone except my sister and me which makes total sense. His diet is now 100% pureed making his meals look more like and artist’s palette than a meal. I learned yesterday that spinach makes my father cry. On his plate were potatoes, spinach and something that would resemble pasta and meatballs in the ‘baby food’ format. 20 years ago, the thought of drinking an Italian meal through a straw had never occurred to me. My father’s daily nutritional needs are now thrown into a blender ala ‘Bass-O-Matic’. And I wonder why he cries? I can’t get away from the feeling that a small part of him is frightened. Not of me or Sarah or Maureen or Pam and the kids but he seems almost Fear Factor scared. My sister says he’s a tortured soul and I would have to agree. There are so many things that run rampant through my mind as I feed him, spoonful by blessed spoonful . . . (I’m looking at a rainbow hovering over Boston as I write this. Truth) there was the day we brought my mother to assisted living and took my father back to our house for a BBQ. That may have been one of the last times that I actually ‘had’ him. He was making sense and I could talk to him and he could understand me. He was profoundly sad about bidding farewell to his wife for two weeks but at least he still liked the taste of beer (something he’s since lost long ago) Spoonful by blessed spoonful . . . the soft, cool grass beneath my feet in the backyard as we played catch after he got home from work. We never talked when we played catch but there was conversation that he and I understood. Especially when he threw a ball with some mustard on it, smiling as I caught it. That was my own personal field of dreams. Spoonful by blessed spoonful . . . the Christmas night I went to the facility he was staying in and found him in a self-induced sugar coma after polishing off an entire bag of Dove’s chocolates that someone had given him. There were candy wrappers everywhere, discarded like wrapping paper on Christmas morning. He seemed ready to do jumping jacks, for Christ's sake I keep praying for a rainbow in his future but he’s having one hell of a time seeing through the gauzy reality he’s currently living in. I finish giving him lunch and to my surprise he’s eaten everything save for the Popeye spinach soup. I’m happy because he has a belly full of food but he’s the farthest thing from a happy ending because he knows it’s time for me to go. I kiss his forehead and say, “I love you, Dad,” to which he replies, “Yeah.” Sarah and I walk to the door and she says, “Bye, Grampa.” More Wally tears. We walk down the corridor to the elevators in silence as I allow myself to cry a bit on the inside wanting badly for the seemingly inconsequential goodbyes to finally end. It’s then that I have an small epiphany; as I feed him lunch, he’s actually feeding me. It’s a Communion of sorts between my father and I. I change my mind then and there. And all of a sudden I don’t want the goodbyes to end.

I began thinking about the old black pot belly stove that sat in the cellar of the house I grew up in. No idea where the thought came from but it triggered a total waterfall of memories for me. The stove was fat in the way a corpulent Santa Claus would be. It had an ornate shiny silver 'belt' of trim around the belly and a flat top where you could actually put a skillet and fry some eggs or place a kettle to boil water. I vaguely remember my father heating some hot dogs and  Boston Baked Beans on it one winter night when the power went out, though my sister would have to validate that. Many magical things happened in that cellar over the years. There were the band rehearsals where I learned to play songs like 'Ohio', 'For What It's Worth' and  'Rocky Racoon'. I learned that Wild Irish Rose was total rotgut at $2.98 a bottle and that weed was something to be smoked and not ripped from the garden to be added to the compost pile. Guild, Fender and Martin guitars were awesome and playing the introduction to 'Black Magic Woman' on a Fender Rhodes while high was a near religious experience. (My Mom knew, but said very little) It was in that special place that I slowly broke away from childhood innocence and began to see all the crazy possibility in the world. It was in the ground level bay window that my father would set up one of those chintzy silver tinsel Christmas trees. You know, the ones that were lit up by a squeaky and archaic tri-color rotating light that turned the tree from red to green to yellow to yack? My father would plug it in and run outside and stand in the side yard and stare at it as he shook his head in total Yuletide affirmation. After my sister's wedding (reception), 100 or so people descended on the house; upstairs, downstairs, in the cellar, 9 Old Worcester Road was transformed into a surreal but quintessential Animal House complete with music, booze, food and crazy people walking through screen doors. I'd never seen my Dad totally blasted until that night. Christ in a sidecar, he was funny. Even funnier the next morning. (don't talk to me, just don't talk to me . . . ) The cellar was also the location of a very special place created by Sarah and Jenna (my two oldest daughters) called, 'Mr. Boston's'. My father had remodeled an old bureau into a bar on wheels, an idea he got from God knows where. Take a bureau and turn it around so the drawers are facing away from you, cover the back and sides with paneling and put a nice wood trim around the top corners and you have a bar. I can still see the tacky yellow linoleum he put on the bureau top. The 'drawer' side faced the bartender where there were drawers filled with drink mixes, napkins, toothpicks, martini glasses, broken corkscrews and booze (except in the off season). There was a maniacal clock with backwards numbers and hands that hung on the wall behind the bar. (the second hand went backwards) On the face it boldly asked "Are you ready for another one?" It's ironic that when you were drunk it actually made some sense. The girls would go straight to Mr. Boston's whenever we went to visit my mother and father. Sarah would usually start out as the bartender because she was older and Jenna would be her soul customer (*ms, intentional). We could hear them laughing and yelling as we all laughed and smiled upstairs. Eventually, they would get a bit bored with the limited clientele and come back upstairs to recruit some fresh meat. We would all go downstairs and 'get served' as the girls became both bartender and waitress. They would take orders on their paper pads and serve us wonderful food and drink. That was until we got our bill. ($768.00 for 2 burgers and drinks!?!?!?! Your prices are too high Mr. Boston) I guess what I realized today was that my cellar was a place where small dreams came true for many people, including my two oldest daughters. And I know that everyone reading this post has their own 'Mr. Boston's' as well. Write about it tonight . . .  and remember. It's only a few pen strokes away . . .

It was September of 2006 that I took a week off from work. I planned on doing some things around the house, smoke some cigars and drink some Guinness. I had a few extra days to play around with and decided to visit my friend Michael who lives on Cape Cod. I left early on Tuesday morning and planned to meet Michael for breakfast before deciding what to do for the day. We met at a place in West Dennis called 'Grumpy's'. It was your basic 'hole-in-the-wall' breakfast place but the knotty pine that lined the inside walls seemed to say, "You will eat well, old man." The aroma of frying bacon and sautéed onions wafted towards us as we walked in and made my empty stomach stand at attention. (but can a stomach do that?) Grumpy's was the farthest thing from grumpy and the coffee was very close to excellent. I ordered two eggs, over real easy, bacon, home fries and raisin toast. No surprise there. Can't remember what Michael ordered but I do remember we both rolled out of there like the older men that we're slowly learning to be. After a Grumpy breakfast we decided to go back and drop off my truck before heading to the beach for the day. And although it was mid-September, the temperature was @75 - 80° with pure cobalt skies. "Want me to bring a cooler? We can stop on the way and throw some beer on ice,"  Michael said. A man after my own heart, I thought. "Sounds like a plan," I said, "And we're covered on cigars." We got to Cahoon's Hollow around 9:45 with 2 beach chairs and a BAC (big ass cooler) in tow. I couldn't believe how warm it was; a kiss of Indian Summer. The beach was totally deserted, save for Michael and I. With a shoreline as expansive as the Hollow it seemed almost surreal. Me, Michael and the beach. We planted our chairs a good distance from the entrance and sat in silence for a bit. The warm, salty breeze and brilliant sunshine took us both away. The sunshine was like millions of tiny fires flittering on the surface of the water, rising and falling methodically with the tide, a natural aquatic pendulum. The blue raspberry sky told both of us that this was going to be a very special day. "Want a cigar?" I asked. "Want a beer?" Michael asked. We both started laughing like two little boys playing hooky from school. With cigars lit and beers opened we chatted the morning away, one blessed sip at a time. I can't even remember what cigars I brought. They may have been Cuban, but truth be told rolled up dogshit would have tasted good that day. Michael and I have always had the ability to talk forever. Doesn't matter if I haven't seen him in 10 years (God forbid), we have some serious history. (Remember Treasure Valley, Deg?) And lot's of it. We weren't alone for very long before we began seeing things popping up in the surf. From my vantage point, the 'things' looked like shiny obsidian bowling balls. "Seals," Michael said, flatly. pop.pop.pop.pop.pop.pop.pop. It seemed like they were popping up everywhere. And it seemed like we were placed there just to see them. I wish I could put the day in a bottle and open it whenever I needed it. My own private and saving grace. Maybe writing it down is a step in the right direction. But maybe Laho would vehemently disagree . . . :mrgreen:

My father's dresser stood roughly 5' high and was made of a dark striped mahogany. The handles were brushed bronze and made an interesting 'clink' after drawer was opened. The most interesting thing was an item sitting on top of it; a cast iron piggy bank that weighed about 3 lbs. with a lock on the underside of the belly. But the strangest thing was that it was painted blue which made no sense to me whatsoever. Pigs were not blue. There was a small felt-lined box that held his wristwatch, rings, spare change, assorted cufflinks and an old broken lighter that I assumed had been my cigar smoking grandfathers. There was a picture of me and my sister Maureen and an old black and white TV kitty-cornered leaning against the wall. All of this sat on an ivory colored doily of sorts. Actually the laced doily may have originally been white but discolored with age, I could never be quite sure. Dad was an orderly man, maybe even a bit anal retentive when it came to his dresser. The drawers in order: sox, underwear and t-shirts, cheeno's and jeans, polos and sweatshirts and in the bottom draw there was an odd assortment of archaic and godforsaken film reels (8mm) that he would never see, pocket watches, old broken wristwatches, pencils, pens, gag gifts from various milestone birthdays, an empty bottle of holy water and a grass stained baseball or two. Upon opening any drawer of the dresser the thing I remember most vividly was the obvious scent of the man. Though I find it hard to describe, imagine fresh warm linen with a hint of a melancholy and long forgotten rainy day. That was my Dad. One thing that's baffled me all these years was his wearing of boxer shorts. Images of him standing in front of the bathroom mirror shaving wearing nothing but boxers, a white t-shirt and stretch black socks are seared in my mind forever. I distinctly remember the day I cleaned out his dresser for the last time. With the exception of his boxers and t-shirts, every drawer held a different memory of him. In his bottom drawer I found a metal 'bank' box that contained old bank passbooks, faded photos of people I didn't know and various documents he had been saving. Underneath the pile I found a tie tack I'd made him when I was about 8 years old. It was brushed silver and had a semi-polished jasper stone set in the middle. I made it at the same time I'd made my mother's 'precious stone' earrings (each earring weighed about 8oz) Finding the tie clip wasn't so much of an emotional thing for me. He didn't leave it there for me to find. He just never threw things like that away. Ever. It was one more thing for me to learn about a man I would soon be losing. The piggy bank is resting comfortably in my cellar right now in a box with all his stuff. To this day I'm still wondering why the hell it was painted blue. Maybe someday I'll still be able to ask him . . .

To look at it, you would think it was just another normal boy's bicycle but I knew better. It was an off-brand that my father bought at an old store in town and I so loved it. Can't remember the name for the life of me but it was mostly fireball red and the fenders had a bit of white detailing on the tips that made the overall effect one of 'daredevil' proportions. It had a really cheesy gold sparkle banana seat, nicely padded for overall shock absorption. The highlight was the handle grips which were a neon orange with black tiger stripes and tiger heads on the ends. Yeah, this was one serious machine, to me anyway. I drove it everywhere: around the neighborhood, into the center of town, to the baseball field, the high school, my multiple girlfriends' houses, the fruit stand for a classic Coke and a bag of State Line Cheese popcorn - there wasn't anyplace this thing wouldn't go. We used to build ramps to practice catching a little bit of airtime and rode 'sans' hands whenever there were girls around. We were daredevils and would try almost anything that gravity would allow. You were nothing without your bike. These days, you're nothing without your FaceBook or MySpace page. Funny how things change . . . One day we decided to race down Harvard Street, a road right next to my house. It had a bit of a downward slope and was an unforgivable gravel with asphalt road, rough as a lizard's skin. During the summer days we never had to worry about cars driving down the road because our fathers were all working and our Moms were at home doing whatever it was that Moms did. We started at the top of Harvard Street and the first one to go all the way down, around the cul-de-sac and back up to the top was the winner. 40+ years ago, the street seemed to go on for days. I mean this was one long ass drag strip. In reality, if I were to drive my truck down and up it today it would take all of about one minute. At 15 M.P.H. Someone yelled, "Ready? On your mark! Get set! Go!" Off I went past the Gilbert's house, whizzed by the Masterson's, flew by the Pelletier's before seeing the cul-de-sac ahead of me. I was clearly in the lead and didn't bother to slow down going into the nasty cul-de-sac. The last thing I remember is hitting a patch off sand as my trusty bike slid out from under me. My left forearm hit the asphalt as the rough road began chewing off my pieces of my skin. My bike was wrecked and my left forearm and knee were bleeding profusely. I left my poor and once awesome bike in the road and ran home in a bloody mess. Winning would have been nice that day but having the skin back on my forearm would have been much nicer. This was the day I learned and took to heart the phrase, "Winning isn't everything." I omitted the last half of it for my own psychological benefit. I did get another bike but it would never be the same. Maybe that was part of growing up that I hadn't counted on . . .

I was up and out of bed at 5:45 this morning, a bit early on a Tuesday but I had some things to do before heading into Boston. I could hear freezing rain ‘ticking' off the windows in the living room and thought, "Early train." Icy conditions bamboozle the commuter rail and taking an early train would ensure me an on-time arrival at work. The train left at 7:30 and being an express train should have arrived in Boston by 9 allowing me an hour or so to grab a bagel, coffee and a quick glance at the morning paper while sitting on my perch high above Copley Square. (@Finagle-a-Bagel on Boylston St.) Faulty rail signals, an express train turned local (all stops) and a medical emergency 15 minutes outside of the city got a very livid Mick to Back Bay Station at 9:50am. Smack my ass and call me Betty, but I was ready to kill someone. So much for the leisurely coffee and toasted bagel, so much for a glance at the newspaper, so much for a break from the incessant insanity surrounding the holiday. Fuck a fruitcake, I was pissed. And I gave up 45 minutes of sleep to run to work. Excellent. That was the start of the day. I should have stayed in bed and continued scratching my ass. This was not what I had in mind to start my day. The month of December has me searching, every single year, looking for something that allows me to make some kind of logical sense of the holidays. It gets harder every year, folks. Some years, I'm lucky and it falls into my hands like a subtle grace from heaven. I remember coming home one Christmas Eve several years ago from wherever I was working at the time. I felt grumpy and tired, filled with enough vitriolic wassail that I was eager to share it with anyone unfortunate enough to cross my path. It was snowing that night and the roads were all unplowed, (another opportunity for me to curse the Gods) making the going very slippery. I pulled up to the top of my driveway, turned off my truck and closed my eyes. After a few deep breaths I said, "It's over, Michael. Another season is over." I got out of my truck and began walking towards the house when I stopped. Beyond the candles in our windows and the twinkling Christmas tree I could see Pamela and my three girls. They were laughing, they were happy and they were waiting for me. With snow falling all around me, my mind took a lifelong snapshot of that image. In an instant, the world changed and in that snowflake-filled moment, so did I. I found exactly what I was looking for (and thanked St.Anthony, btw). That Christmas Eve would turn out to be something magical. This year, the task is turning out to be something of a scavenger hunt. 8 days left and I'm still looking . . . and saying my fervent prayers to St.Anthony . . .

On most days my father wears a baseball hat. Even when he was well if he wasn't working he was wearing some type of baseball hat. It was an intrinsic part of his daily get up. It was usually the Red Sox, maybe the Celtics but NEVER the NY Yankees, God forbid, he would rather die than to be caught wearing one of those. He still wears a hat these days although he would be hard pressed to tell you which hat he was wearing. Truth be told, on any given day lately I'd have a tough time telling you what hat I‘m wearing. I was talking with my sister Moe the other day and she told me a very interesting story about our father and one of his 'hats'. She came down last weekend to see ‘Dad' and wheeled him down to the quaint chapel in the nursing home for Sunday morning mass. She had called ahead to ask that he be cleaned up and shaved and dressed nicely, the proverbial cherry on the sundae, his baseball hat. They got to the chapel where I'm assuming my sister knelt and said a prayer or two (thousand) . . . As she sat back she noticed that Dad's hat was sitting in his lap. She swears she did not take it off, she was sure of that. He took it off himself. My sister took it as a sign that our father still acknowledges the fact that he is in a place that's sacred and taking off your hat is something you do out of reverence and respect. Maybe she's right. I took it more as a sign that says she and I will never be alone in this shattered ordeal that's slowly nearing its very blue end. Either way, I know that I wanted to remember the moment even though I couldn't be there. And though it's doubtful that our father said one single prayer that morning, I'm confident that he left the chapel with more blessings than anyone else in the place. And I'm positive he put his baseball cap right back on as he left.