IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

“Chloe, want to play Santa Claus?” I asked the other day as I was getting ready to shave.

“Yes!” Chloe responded as she ran to get her stool so she would have something to stand upon.

“Alright, I’ll meet you in there,” I said as I headed into the bathroom, took out my shaving stuff and started to run the hot water.

“Never mind, Dad,” she yelled at me as she waltzed past the bathroom a few minutes later and headed for the back door. “Josh and I are going to play in the backyard! See you later.”

The Santa Claus game started a couple of years ago when Chloe followed me into the bathroom one day and she watched me put shaving cream on my face. “You look like Santa Claus,” she said to me and as I looked at myself in the mirror, I had to agree with her. The shaving cream looked like the white, billowy beard of Father Christmas and before I knew what I was doing, I broke into my best impression of Saint Nick and had a conversation with Chloe as if I was the jolly old elf himself.

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One of the first acts we committed as parents was to count the fingers and toes of our children. Once all of their appendages had been accounted for, we started to examine our children to see what features they had received from us. Did they get my eyes? My Ears? My nose? Did they get any of my traits? Or did they get them all from Stephanie? And we were not the only ones who engaged in this ritual, our family members tried to account for what genetic qualities our children got from them as well.

As our children have grown up, Stephanie and I have often joked about which personality traits each of us gave to the children. The debate rages on over Joshua because he seems to have so many physical features and personality traits from both Stephanie and I. On the other hand, though, it has been firmly established by many of our friends and family members that Chloe got her beauty from her mother and her temperament as well as her humor from me.

The fun part of having these conversations is that we can pinpoint exactly which traits Stephanie got from each of her parents but because I am adopted, everyone wants to know from whom I get my idiosyncratic style. Is it genetic? Or is it environmental? And whenever the conversation is brokered, it leads to a lot of fun filled, zany and downright hilarious theories as to how I became the person I am today.

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It had been a little more than a year since I had found my birth name and I was personally frustrated with myself at the progress I had made. Life changing events had consumed a lot of my free time, so my opportunities to continue my inquiry had been put on the back burner. I had gotten married, started a new job, moved to a new state and started a new life. Stephanie and I were newlyweds and we had a lot on our plate. So as my twenty-eighth birthday approached, my mind started to wander back to my search for my biological parents.

I hadn’t completely stopped looking for them. I had flirted around with some new search techniques during the course of the year. My neighbor, Will, was a computer programmer and he introduced me to the capabilities of the internet and how I might be able to find information more easily. The internet (in many respects) was still in its infancy twelve years ago. The abundance of information that is at our fingertips today didn’t exist on the web over a decade ago. And that lack of readily available information made it difficult for me to navigate my search through an ever changing cyberworld.

I had my birth name which gave me some clues as to who I was looking for and I now had a last name that allowed me to narrow the scope of my search. I had a birth location which became known as ground zero and the basic non-identifying information that the adoption agency had given to me when I started looking for my birth parents. And most of all, I had my creativity, my imagination, my ingenuity and an uncanny knack for asking questions in unique ways that allowed me to gain access to useful information. But even then, my quest for the truth seemed more like a constant lessen in futility because I ran into more roadblocks then I ever thought would have existed.

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Josh’s goldfish died a week ago. It wasn’t unexpected as “Goldie” had not been looking good lately. Josh was understandably upset and although he wanted to have a funeral for “Goldie,” he wasn’t ready to say goodbye because he was still processing his feelings. So we decided to have the talk about the good memories we have of “Goldie” and that seemed to help Josh and Chloe get through some of their grief.

This past Sunday afternoon, as I was sitting on the porch watching the kids play in the front yard, I thought about the conversation we had with the kids last summer after Grandma passed. We were sharing fond memories of the good times we had with Grandma when we started going around the room and asking, “What would you miss if I were gone?”

We talked about how we would miss Stephanie’s gardens as well as her arts and crafts projects. The world is Stephanie’s palette and her garden is an expression of her love and creativity. Her passion for art projects is an extension of that originality that allows her to share the world’s endless possibilities with the kids.

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The sun was shining through the windows while a gentle breeze was blowing through the curtains and I could tell right away that it was going to be a great day. I needed to take my car into the repair shop by 8:00 a.m. so I poured a cup of coffee, headed into the living room and turned on Sports Center. I was lacing up my sneakers and keeping an eye on the Yankees highlights when Stephanie came into the living room and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to follow you over? You can drop off your car and then come with me to drop off the kids at school.”

“Thanks, Steph, but I’ll be fine. Take the kids to school and I’ll meet you back here afterward. Besides, it’s a great day for a walk,” I responded as the kids came running into the living room.

“Can I watch Curious George, Daddy?” Chloe asked.

“You need to get ready for school,” I said as I touched her nose with the tip of my pointer finger. Then I picked up the remote control and turned off the television.

“Are you sure? I can drive you…”

“Trust me, Steph, I’m fine. The sun is shining outside; a walk will be nice after the winter we have had,” I said as I cut her off mid sentence. I took one last swig of my coffee, gave the kids a bunch of hugs before I left, went outside, got into my car and drove off. After I pulled into the repair station and gave the mechanic my car key, I started to walk home. As I crossed the street, I made my way to the local garden center and walked in the front door.

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Stephanie and I spent last Sunday night on the couch in front of the television. It was a chance for us to finally relax and decompress after a long weekend and as the evening was starting to get late, Stephanie said, “I’m going up to bed. Are you coming up?”

“Not right now. I’ll be up in a little bit,” I responded. “I am going to watch the end.”

“I had a lot of fun today, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me; it wasn’t what I had originally planned but what the heck? We went with the flow today and we had a lot of fun.”

“Well, it was a great day. Just what the doctor ordered but I am tired and need to get some sleep,” Stephanie said as she got up off the couch, gave me a kiss and headed upstairs to bed.

I continued to watch the show but my mind started to wander as I thought about the day we had just spent together. The kids and I started Mother’s Day off by making breakfast in bed for Stephanie. The children helped me make an omelet and coffee. Stephanie was awake when we delivered the food to her and while she ate, the kids inundated her with many, many cards that they had made for her.

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“Dad,” Josh whispered as he jostled my shoulders. “Wake up, it’s time to go.”

“What?” I asked as I rolled over, rubbed my eyes and peered at Josh through the slits of my barely open eyelids.

“Wake up, Dad, it’s time to go,” he excitedly whispered again.

“What time is it?”

“5:30”

“Go get dressed. I’ll be downstairs in five minutes,” I said as I stared at the clock and rubbed my face with my hands. As I sat up on my end of the bed, I was beginning to hate this idea. Unfortunately, it was my idea and although it sounded great when I was stuck in traffic on Friday afternoon on my way home, at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, I was regretting my decision. I am not a morning person, especially on the weekends, and I am not a fisherman but Josh loves to fish.

His Uncle Paul takes him fishing when Paul comes to visit. Last fall, the cub scouts had a fishing day at a local pond and Josh had the best time fishing with his friends. So I thought about the two of us fishing together when I got caught in traffic on my way home. Work has been hectic lately and I have been at the office a lot over the past few weeks. There is a lot to get done before the end of the Fiscal Year, so I have been home less than usual at night and our weekends have been extremely busy over the past month.

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This morning I rifled through my old emails and started to delete them when I came across an old one from my aunt after she attended the final game played at Yankee Stadium last September:

Dear Douglas,

Wanted to know your thoughts about the ’stadium’ closing? I went to the final game. It would have been better if this was October and the last game, but it was still a very special night. Unfortunately I was delusional to think that I was going to walk on the field. I got there early, but not early enough. So after three hours, and walking the whole stadium three times from top to bottom, and still on the top level I said ‘uncle’. Settled into my seat and just enjoyed the entire day/evening/night. It was great, talking to different people hearing their memories, and recanting my own. Here’s to the next chapter, and hopefully #27.

I was so involved in other projects at the time that I never had the opportunity to reply. But, in retrospect, I didn’t respond because I never had a chance to sit down and think about what the old Yankee Stadium had meant to me throughout the course of my life. I had been to so many games, spent so much of my life there and even when I moved away, I made the time and effort to take my children to Yankee Stadium annually to see a game.

Yankee Stadium was a special place. Whenever I handed the gate attendant my ticket and cascaded through the turnstiles, I was immediately overcome with an aura of magic and greatness that emanated throughout the skeleton of the building. As I walked through the inner sanctum of the hallways that connected the outside world to the majestic palace that Ruth built, I could feel the history of the stadium rise up and envelope me. It was hallowed ground.

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“Are you okay?” Stephanie asked as we sat around one night last month watching television.

“I’m fine, Steph. Really, I am. I think I’m just tired,” I said as I tried to avoid the conversation.

“No, it’s not, Sweetie. Something’s bothering you, I can feel it,” she said as she grabbed the remote and paused the TiVo. She could tell that something was on my mind and I knew she wasn’t going to let the conversation drop until we talked about it.

“I just have one of those feelings, Steph, and I can’t put my finger on what it is.”

“Really?” Stephanie asked concerned. Stephanie knew that at random times in my life I would get hit with this inexplicable feeling that normally led to bad news or to something bad happening. So my proclamation that ‘I had a feeling that I couldn’t explain’ was not something that Stephanie ever took lightly.

“It’s not one of those feelings, Stephanie, honest. It’s different this time,” and it was. This was the first time in my life that the weird pit in my stomach wasn’t my usual feeling of impending doom. It was atypical and that made it even more concerning to me.

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A few months ago, Josh and Chloe were playing with their toys in the living room. Chloe got bored with her own toys and decided to wreak havoc on Josh’s construction project. As Chloe was about to knock over the building he was making with his blocks, Josh made one last attempt to warn her against it, “Chloe, if you knock it down, I’m going to hit you!”

“Josh,” I said abruptly in response to his statement. Josh turned quickly and stared at me with a ghostly expression because he had forgotten that I was sitting in the chair behind him and heard what he had said to his sister. “We don’t threaten to hit.”

But before he could say anything in his defense, his right arm came up and grabbed the back of his left arm as he screamed, “Oooowwwww!”

As I was talking to Josh about threatening his little sister, Chloe exacted a quick, severe and resounding pre-emptive strike of her own; she bit him! The tears welled up in his eyes as the electrical shock of having been bitten coursed painfully throughout Josh’s body. Stephanie came into the room to see what was happening as I tried to console Josh and scold Chloe at the same time. In the middle of the black and blue welt that was developing on his arm where Chloe had bit him was a trickle of blood where she had broken the skin with her teeth. Stephanie took him into the bathroom to clean out the cut while I took Chloe to the time-out chair.

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