My dad had a friend named Squirrel.

Well, he wasn’t really a friend, but rather an acquaintance from the bar my dad went to after work sometimes. Squirrel was a slurring, drunk man, though probably not as much in real life as he is in my memory. In the far reaches of my mind he is the wobbly pharmacist from It’s a Wonderful Life, stumbling and spitting his words in my grandma’s kitchen one cold Christmas Eve.

I know for a fact that he stammered, because one of my cousins compared his speech to the lyrics of the Chaka Khan song playing every hour on the pop-radio station that year. Not the part where she croons, “I feeeeel for you,” but the part where Grandmaster Melle Mel raps, “Chaka, Chaka, Chaka Khan…” Squirrel could have probably been an 80’s star if he had only had the right management.

I was a young teenager when this odd, little man stood on the white, tiled floor next to the butcher block where the Christmas ham was perched. It was the same place where my grandma spent hours rolling out dough and cutting noodles by hand. She had no dishwasher, no air conditioning and no counter space, yet she never failed to have supper on the table. I have of all of those things and still don’t always make an evening meal.

But, it was never about what she didn’t have. What she did have, and what that house held, was immeasurable kindness and love. Squirrel, weaving inside the circle that my cousins and I had created around him, was there that Christmas Eve because he likely didn’t have anywhere else to go. My dad made sure that he wouldn’t be alone. Though, at the time, I saw this drunk man as uproarious entertainment, I see him now as a symbol of everything I’m proud of.

Sure, we probably handed him egg nog and rum when he didn’t really need it, but we also gave him warmth, food, and a rapt audience for his grand tales. We gave him a room to dry his boots, a place to laugh and feel part of a family, if only for an evening.

I can’t tell you what I got for Christmas that year. I don’t remember how many presents were under the tree or if my stocking was full. What I got was a fond memory and the sense that I need to give something back. I’m not talking about money, because I don’t have a lot of that. What I really want to do with my life is give people a place to dry their figurative boots.

But, first I have to get this Chaka Khan song out of my head.

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Last night, my kids and I were traveling in our car when I looked into my rear-view mirror to see a small truck pull onto the street behind me. He had to turn left to get there and as his green pick-up crossed the other lane, a car going in the opposite direction nearly slammed right into him. The white compact car had to slam on his brakes and, rightly so, also slammed on his horn.

The green pick-up driver responded as anyone who is clearly at fault should do, which was to stick his hand out of his window and flip-off the driver of the little, white car.

As I watched the scene unfold in my mirror I said, “I’m sure! That pick-up truck driver just stuck his middle finger out at the guy who didn’t do anything wrong!”

And, as we passed through a busy intersection I turned to see my son in the back seat with his middle finger out of the window as he looked at me and said, “You mean, like this?”

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Saturday was your birthday. I thought about you all day in between cutting dead branches off of the twisted dogwood tree behind our garage. It felt good to break sticks and tear off limbs; it even seemed right when I broke the saw blade. I did a lot of sweating, burning wood, raking and…living. I breathed big and deep and thought of you.

I can’t believe it’s been 21 years since I walked off the elevator at the hospital and those same lungs had the air sucked from them like the hallway was an enormous vacuum; my vision and the air swirling around me and wooshing down the corridor past the rooms with beeping machines and nurses going about their business. And, you were gone.

There was death before that, but there was no death like that until that moment. I don’t know what I was thinking. That a grown man with Muscular Dystrophy would live forever? Yes, I think that’s what I believed. You were bigger than any disease. In this universe, among billions of people and planets and stars, you were a giant and as strong as any force I had ever known.

I think of you so often; when the house is quiet except for the buzz of a Reds game on TV, when I look at the closed end of Ohio Stadium and spy the spot where you used to sit behind the scoreboard and watch the Buckeyes, when I see someone in a wheelchair and know there is a human being – not a disabled person – sitting in the seat.

A couple of months ago I asked your sister if I could borrow a pen and she handed me this…

I remember this pen cradled in your hand as you wrote. I wish I had saved every scrap of paper that touched it and that I still had your words to read. You and I were kindred spirits with our writing, though as with everything, you were better at it. You would have been a great sports blogger, what with your knowledge and snark. I’ll do my best to post enough of the latter for both of us.

It didn’t really surprise me to know that this pen has never run out of ink; that your sister has carried it in her purse for more than two decades and it’s still working without ever having been refilled. You have ways of making sure we remember you.

Though, I can assure you, we wouldn’t ever forget.

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Here’s what I could tell you; that I have a raging headache, that I threw my back out two days ago and have been working from bed, that I’m worried about my husband who has, what we think is, nerve damage, that I’m terrified about our money situation and wondering if it’s legal to sell your kidney, and that I can’t shake the memory of seeing our aunt the other day, at 96 years old and oh, so fragile, lying in her bed, knowing it was likely the last time I will see her on this earth.

Pretty much, I could tell you about lots of body parts, pain and dying. I’m also available for parties.

I could tell you that I’m sad there is a hole in my favorite pants, that it’s already too cold outside for my liking, or that I think I may have an addiction to peanut butter flavored cereal.

I might want to mention that I have one foot bigger than the other, my right leg is shorter than my left and that my house is never, ever clean. Ever.

Or, we can talk about how the worst thing I’ve ever attended was a monster truck rally, that I prefer white candles and silver jewelry, that I have the best readers anyone could ask for, or that there is nothing that feels quite as good as a hug (except maybe a margarita when it’s 75 degrees outside).

I could say that my kids amaze me EVERY SINGLE DAY, that my dad is funnier than your dad, and that my husband is the grumpiest, kind-hearted man you will ever meet. Oh, and that although I spend my day in yoga pants, despite never having done yoga, my favorite magazine is InStyle.

Or, I could just show you a picture of my son holding a giant mushroom.

Welcome to my brain.

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