Chapter Two: Singing Elevators and Wooden Wheelchairs

My mom and dad now had to deal with the new reality of raising two kids in the CF world, the problem was they were not even remotely aware of what that bizarre world was all about, or what it entailed. Just as well, as it turned out, their naiveté probably kept them sane.

My father had to work, that was for certain, because at that point they were not sure how much keeping us healthy would cost, or if it was even something they could afford to do. Selling us on the black market was not an option.

My father had a form of health insurance through his job for the family, but it was rudimentary at best, and was certainly not set up for such a situation. Sick kids are many things, and expensive is one of them.

Now more than ever my dad could not miss work, lest his employers start looking at him the wrong way. So it fell on my mom to take the CF ball and start running with it. It was a job that frankly scared the you-know-what out of her, but there was no one else to run the play. She set up an orientation meeting with Dr. Denning at Columbia Presbyterian, and off she went, with us in tow.

Columbia Presbyterian is in uptown Manhattan, and back then, not in what one would call a “nice” neighborhood. Because my mom didn’t drive, and our family was currently without a car anyway, our only way to go was the subway. To my sister and myself, it was an adventure, to my mom, not so much. I was back then, what some would call an inquisitive child; but to my mom I was a “little devil.” Both definitions had their points of validity, actually. If she could have put a leash on me, I believe she would have, but it would probably be frowned upon.

We had been on the subway numerous times before, of course, but this was different. The route we had to take was the number 7 Flushing line into Times Square, which we had done a dozen times before, to go to the Central Park Zoo and such. But then we had to transfer to the number 1 train, which took us up to the hospital, straight through Harlem. There’s no delicate way of saying this. It was often that we were practically the only white people on the entire train. And let me state, when you’re a sickly Irish kid, your not just white, you're REALLY white. Yes, we stood out, not that I noticed. I still would walk up to strangers and talk to them, which drove my poor mom crazy.

When we got off the number 1 train at our stop, 168^th Street, we looked for the exit, and realized that at this stop, we were actually 4 stories below ground. The idea of climbing 4 flights of stairs with us kids did not thrill my mom. She noticed a crowd all walking in the same direction, and decided to follow them. It turns out they were all heading for an elevator, that ran straight up to street level. It was small, dirty, and rickety looking, but opposed to 4 dimly lit flights of stairs, she decide to try it out anyway. Clumps a people would jam into its car as it returned again and again, gradually wearing down the size of the crowd, till there were just a few of us left. Once again, we were the only white faces in attendance.

The car door opened once again, and we quickly shuffled on. Mom quickly realized the elevator was not automatic, there actually was a guy sitting on a stool that dropped down from the elevator wall running the thing. “Afternoon…” the man nodded to my mom as we were jammed into the back of the car. “All the way back, all the way back, back up, back up, back up…” he kept repeating as everyone got on. The door closed, well, not a door, actually, more like a mesh gate. The elevator took off, and my legs buckled. We had an elevator in our building at home, but this thing moved more than twice as fast. I watched as the shaft walls whizzed by. I was fascinated. The elevator operator guy sang all the way up to the street at the top of his lungs. Finally, we lurched to a stop, and after he made several adjustments to match the door opening with the floor outside, the elevator guy pulled back the gate, and we shuffled out. “Ma’am,” he nodded to my mom as we left. In years to come, I looked forward to his singing with every visit, he had a great voice, and the acoustics were fantastic.

Finally we had arrived at the hospital. Columbia Presbyterian was and still is an enormous complex, made up of several, sprawling buildings that covered blocks and blocks. Holding us tightly by the hand on each side, mom ventured into the main lobby of the Vanderbilt Clinic, to try to get some information of where to get the elevator to the 11^th floor. This was where the CF clinic was supposed to be.

The lobby was enormous. There were rows and rows of beat-up looking brown vinyl and aluminum chairs (most occupied) in front of bank after bank of teller-like windows. All kinds of people, some with kids and others alone, snaked back and forth in lines leading to those windows. It was noisy and hot, with the constant drone of hundreds of voices and the occasional crying child, mixing with the buzz of dozens of black wire mesh enclosed fans bolted to cement columns up near the ceiling, sweeping back and forth.

My mom went up to someone she assumed was a security guard and asked if he knew where the elevators were. The uniformed man just pointed in a general direction, not saying a word. She was about to ask him for more information, then stopped, realizing she probably would have a hard time hearing him anyway. We headed in the general direction he pointed, and mom kept asking people in white coats for further directions as we went, to narrow down our search. Finally, after winding our way through the maze of hallways that all looked the same to me, we came upon a bank of elevators.

After a ridiculously long wait, we finally got into an elevator that was immediately filled to capacity, since it was the only car of a bank of three that was working. We were to learn later that the elevators in this building broke down on a regular basis, and considering how crowded they instantly became when they would finally arrive at the lobby, it was understandable. I thought about singing at the top of my lungs, just for fun, like the subway elevator guy, but the serious look on my mom’s face made me think twice. I kept my mouth shut.

We arrived at the 11^th floor and then at an information window were directed all the way down to the end of the corridor, where we found more rows of those brown vinyl seats. My mom told us to sit down while she found out what we were to do next.

It wasn’t long before I spotted a group of old, wooden hospital wheelchairs in an alcove by the stairs. That’s for me, I thought. By the time my mom returned, Maureen and I where banging into the walls and each other in our stolen wheelchairs. Mom just let out a tired sigh, grabbed a brown vinyl seat and waited for us to be called.

I remember the CF clinic as a series of rooms that we were shuffled to, one after the other. An older looking nurse in a starched white uniform complete with a white pointy cap would first take our temperature with a glass thermometer. I recall it was sitting on gauze in a steel basin covered in a liquid I guess was alcohol, because I was sternly warned not to touch it by my mom. I guess she thought I was bad enough sober. Blood pressure was taken, saying Ahh with a wooden stick in your mouth, all the standard 60s medical poking and prodding.

Finally we were invited to go into a room by a matronly looking blond-haired lady in a white coat who amazingly introduced herself to me as Dr. Carolyn Denning. It was the first time a doctor had addressed me as if I was actually in the room. Dr. Knownothing always treated me like a stepstool my folks brought along for their appointment.

Again to my surprise, Dr. Denning spent a long time asking me, not my mom, a bunch of questions. These were like: was it hard for me to run around and play, did I ever make whistling noises when I would breathe, did I cough when I would laugh, lots of things that I had never thought about.

She asked my mom a lot of questions too, and I spent that time scanning the room trying to figure what some of the machines sitting on tables and pushed into the corner of the room would do. I recall lots of things with dials, rubber tubes, glass bottles and some scary looking masks that would go over your nose and mouth, with big balloon like things hanging below them.

Then it was back to me, and Dr. Denning took out her stethoscope. Then there was a lot of taking deep breaths while the doctor listened to my lungs, heart, over and over, at endless points all around my chest.

Finally Dr. Denning asked Maureen and I to go back to the waiting area, which I was happy to do; old creaky wheelchairs were waiting for us.

Dr. Denning now introduced my mom to another doctor at the clinic, a Dr. Orais. As my mom told me years later, it was Dr. Oais’ job to now explain to my mom what she had to do, what our treatments would be every day, and how she was to do them.

The list of tasks were daunting, to say the least. First, there was the medication. CF gives you two main defects; one affects the lungs, the other the digestive tract.

For the lungs, first my mom had to mix two medications, measure milligrams with a hypodermic needle, count drops, and put the mixture into a glass bulb that was the bottom of a mask that then Maureen and I had to wear on our face. My mom was sure she’d mess up the concoction somehow, and end up killing us both.

The idea of the liquid mixture was to make the mucus in our lungs looser, so it would be easier for us to cough it out.

The mask was attached to an air compressor, to turn the mixture into a mist that Maureen and I were to breath in. Dr. Orais demonstrated one of the set-ups to my mom. The compressor ran with an electric engine that growled loudly. One machine was loud enough, she observed, but we would be using two of them at the same time. She could just imagine the racket.

All these medications and theories were truly in their infancy, and consequently, only worked so well. But it was all we had, so you made do. To this day I remember we hated wearing those masks; they were hot, sticky and smelled like burning rubber and medicine.

Next came the postural drainage, what is commonly called “clapping”. Imagine being told that you had to whack your child for 30 minutes twice a day, every day. Granted, for some folks, this sounds like a fine idea; a wonderful frustration relief when your kids piss you off. But it was not so for my parents, at least not on most days. What the process entailed was Maureen and I either lying or sitting on the bed in various positions, some on our back, others on our sides, with pillows propping us up so we lay on a slant with our feet higher than our heads, or the other way around. Then my mom or dad would have to cup their hands and basically rhythmically beat on us for about 2 or 3 minutes in each position. Then we had to cough and try to bring up anything that got banged loose.

Then when all of that as done, my mom had to mix a liquid antibiotic with a saline solution in another hypodermic needle to go back in the mask cup (which had to have been washed out) which we then had to put back on for another 15 minutes or so. We had to do all this, every day, twice a day, basically forever.

Lastly were the mist tents. If you’ve ever seen a movie where a person is being kept in isolation, then you’ve probably seen one of these plastic nightmares. There made up of aluminum tubing that goes under the mattress, then up and over the top half of the bed. The aluminum frame is then covered with a thick, clear vinyl plastic, which drapes over the bed and down the sides. There is a hole with elastic around its edges poked into each side of the tent near the top to permit the entrance of a wide plastic and wire hose to enter the tent. This hose is attached to a water supply, which is then attached to another, far bigger air compressor. This one roared with a volume not unlike a lawn mower, but imagine one that you ran in your bedroom.

The end result was a tent filled with a fine water vapor. But that doesn’t quite describe it. A little piece of hell is more appropriate. But I’ll tackle that later.

Some of this equipment would be shipped to us in the coming days, others she would have to get at a supply store on the West side of Manhattan. The rest my mom had with take home with her. How we were supposed to accomplish that on the subway was still up for grabs.

That took care of the lungs, but remember there was still the digestive system to deal with. I said earlier how Maureen and I had a great deal of trouble absorbing nutrition from the food we ate. It turns out the reason for that is basically the mucus problem again. It gets into everything, the little bastard, and also cloging the ducts in your pancreas, where the enzymes it produces that let you digest your food are secreted into your digestive tract. With the ducts blocked, food would hardly be digested and pass right on through, even more so if the food was too fatty.

So as it turned out, the milkshake diet Dr. Knownothing came up with years earlier was a complete waste of time, there was no way for Maureen to digest any of it. Actually, the shakes just served to lubricate any other food's trip through her digestive system. Nothing like a fix that makes the situation much worse. Thanks again, doc.

The answer in this case was a medication Maureen and I would have to take before we ate anything. It was basically a substitute for the enzymes we could not produce ourselves in capsule form. Of course, the fact that neither Maureen or I had ever learned to swallow a pill of any sort made for some fun times ahead, considering it was required that we would have to take 3 to 4 capsules before every meal.

Dr. Orais gave my mom a whole pile of instructions, some on mimeograph paper. There was an extensive medication list, with dosing instructions, manuals for all the aerosol equipment and compressors, with directions on how to hook them up, and then a book of postural drainage instructions with diagrams of all the clapping positions. The materials were vast; it was a little library all by itself.

The doctor could see the look on my mom’s face. Sadly, she had seen it many times before. The task ahead was almost too much for mom to take in. She gently put her hand on my mom’s. “You can do this,” the doctor assured her.

My mom looked at her. “I’m not so sure I can…” she answered. She was nearly in tears. “Could you give me a few minutes?” she asked.

“Sure, I’ll be right outside.” Dr. Orais answered, and left the small room that they were sitting in.

Mom then sat by herself. Now she was no longer naïve. That was for sure. That innocence had been replaced with a state of shock.

She looked at all the materials in front of her, all the machines, all of the tubes, bottles, and needles, all the medications. She saw a sea of unknown possible dangers.

Then she let go, and the tears came. She cried for Maureen and I, she cried for my father, she cried for herself. She felt completely overwhelmed. The tears just kept coming, she felt as if they would never end.

Years later she told me suddenly she could hear Maureen and I laughing in our stolen wheelchairs outside in the waiting area. She knew her own children’s laugh right away, any mother does. Mom got a handkerchief out of her purse, dried her tears and wiped her face. She composed herself, took a deep breath, and said to the empty room “Well, there’s no one else to do this, and it’s got to be done, so I guess it’s up to us.”

The tears were done, and that was that. It was time to go home, and begin a new way of life. But first, she had to figure how she was going to get all this stuff home on the subway, with two kids in tow.

There was no way to get all the equipment home with just the three of us, that much was certain. With no car to help us, there was not much point calling my dad, either. Besides, he was still at work.

Mom decided to take just one of the compressors with her that day, Maureen and I would have to share it for a few days until dad could stop by after work and pick up the other one.

We filled several shopping bags, and both Maureen and I were given our own loads to carry. We covered all the bags with newspapers on top; so that it was not so obvious we were hauling boxes and boxes of pills, medicine vials, hypodermic needles, rubber tubes and masks. We thought fellow subway riders might think it strange that two kids and an older woman were hauling a cartel’s worth of drugs and medical equipment. Who could blame them?

Thus, we were loaded up with our weapons to start slaying the CF monster. We thanked the doctors, grabbed our shopping bags, and headed back to the subway. Our singing elevator guy was waiting, as was the task ahead. Luckily, we had no idea what we were in for; it made the days ahead easier to deal with. The fun was just beginning.

End of Chapter Two

Chapter One: Milk Shakes and Horse Flies

I have Cystic Fibrosis. There, I’ve pointed to the large, white elephant in the middle of the room that is me. It’s a funny thing to talk about. In some ways, I feel it’s a small part of who I am, but in other ways, it’s the most defining aspect of my life. It’s all I’ve ever known, and has shaped me in too many ways to count; yet I fight to give it as little influence as possible. Truth is, I wish all of this was not the case, but none of us are able to decide what baggage we’re handed right after they check the arrival box our birth certificate, or some strained metaphor to that effect.

First off, I should give a definition to those of you who don’t know what Cystic Fibrosis is. To state it simply, CF is a huge pain in the ass. Oh, I can give you the diagnostic explanation, if you want:

Cystic fibrosis is an inherited disease that causes thick, sticky mucus to build up in the lungs and digestive tract. It is one of the most common chronic lung diseases in children and young adults, and may result in early death.

There. But believe me, that medical descriptive diagnosis does little to really help you understand what CF is. My explanation is better, more succinct, and more accurate, actually. The only qualitative addition I would make is how much of huge a pain in the ass it is, and how that amount changes throughout a lifespan.

Let me start at beginning. I must state this first part of my personal history as being information relayed to me by my parents, of course, since I was either too young to understand any of it or was not a participant in this reality at the time. Don’t worry, that will make sense later.

I arrived on this good old planet (specifically New York City) in 1959, the second of three children born to my Irish-American parents. They were both immigrants to this country, who met here a few years after their arrival. I had an older sister, Maureen, who was 2 years my senior. Later, my folks had a second daughter, Helene, born 5 years after me.

Right from the beginning, my older sister seemed to get colds a lot more often than one might expect, at least it seemed that way to my folks. My mom and dad were often back and forth to the doctor, who gave them various diagnostic explanations: respiratory infection, bronchitis, lung inflammation, allergies, strep throat, whooping cough; the list went on and on.

When I was born, it started all over again. Now my parents were toting the two of us on the constant trek back and forth to good old Dr. Knownothing (whose name we do not speak). The good doctor was your classic, good old hometown local doc, which in this case meant he didn’t have a clue as to what the hell was going on. I remember him vaguely as a fat man with big hands and a painfully strong grip, handy for dispensing shots that required one not to move. For some strange reason, he had a huge satellite dish sized sun lamp in his examination room. I remember that thing to this day and it always terrified me.

It’s not that he was a stupid man, quite the contrary. His main problem, it would turn out, was not that uncommon back in the good-old days: he had graduated from medical school sometime in the 40s, and had not cracked open a book since. As you can imagine, that could be a big problem, but my folks had no idea, and besides, that was an age when most never questioned your doctor.

My folks spent money hand over fist at his office and the local pharmacy, and we just got sicker and sicker. I often wonder how they put up with the constant pressure and fear of their children hurting and nothing they did seemed to help.

My sister Maureen was worse off than I was. She was thin as a rail, and no matter how much my mom fed her, she would lose more and more weight.

One day Dr. Knownothing’s brilliant solution was to feed her a constant diet of milkshakes, as that was sure to pack on the pounds! My mom dutifully complied, and my sister got a severe case of diarrhea. As fast as mom poured the shakes in, they came out the other end. It seemed as though she had little ability to absorb the food that was given to her. The doctor was puzzled, saying he would start looking into digestive disorders. My parents were at their wits’ end.

But bless them both; they still tried to make our family life as normal as possible, which obviously was not an easy task. Summer was coming on, I had just turned 2 and my sister was now 4. It was common back then for a vacation to pack up the car with the family and head out to the country. In our case, the place to go was the Emerald Isle of the Catskills, an area in Greene County.

The town we headed for was East Durham, which still to this day wears its Irish roots on its sleeve, hat, tee shirt, and socks. You get then idea. You couldn’t swing a shillelagh and not hit a guy or gal from the old sod, as they say. My folks felt very much at home, and surely could use a few days off from the constant pressure of doctor visits. Besides, we were sick no matter where we were. So we packed up the old Plymouth and off we went.

After we arrived upstate and got ourselves a housekeeping cottage (the most popular way to vacation in that area back then) my parents looked around for ways to keep us kids occupied. Back in the early 60s, when the Catskills was hopping with families from the city, there were several tourist attractions designed to pull those city slicker dollars in. One of the biggest was a spot called Carson City & Indian Village, a re-creation of a real shoot-em-up Wild West town, complete with more cowboys and Indians than you could shake a six-shooter at. Just the place to take two kids for a day of riding horses or the stage coach, staged gun battles and saloon fights, and face-painted Indians; just about all the tacky Old West schlock a kid could handle.

Of course, there were balloons and pennants and all sorts of souvenirs, but I wanted and got a straw cowboy hat, which I wore with the seriousness demanded of my appointed position as a deputy sheriff. A tall mustached guy in a big, Stetson hat and a shiny silver star on his leather vest deputized me. We still have a faded family photo of my parents, Maureen and myself posing in rootin’ tootin’ buckboard coach. It’s what you don’t see in that photo that later made all the difference.

We had a nice, restful vacation, but sadly soon Maureen and I were up coughing every night. Since our parents were not sure if the damp air of the countryside was causing us more harm than good, they decided to head back to the city.

It wasn’t long after we got home from vacation that my mother noticed I was sleeping more than normal. At first she just chalked it up to me being tuckered out from the excitement of the trip. But it continued, and seem to be getting more pronounced. I was walking by that time, but now seemed to be having more trouble navigating than I had been just weeks before. Worried, my mom called Dr. Knownothing, who like many doctors back then, still made house calls. He came the next day and had my mom take me out of the crib to take a little walk. I stumbled and rocked like a drunken sailor, and finally fell over on my butt. I’ll give the doctor credit for this one, anyway. He took me to the hospital immediately.

By the time I got to the hospital, I seemed to be having trouble keeping conscious. I was rushed to the emergency room, but little by little, I was slipping away. By later on the next day, I had lapsed into a coma.

Tests were done; (x-rays and the like), basically all you could do back in those days. It wasn’t long before they had a diagnosis: I had Encephalitis, which is a swelling of the brain brought on by a virus. It’s much more common in countries where people live near a lot of livestock; whose waste attracts biting insects, such as a mosquito or horsefly, then the virus is transmitted by their bite.

Remember that buckboard coach photo of my family? What you didn’t see in that snapshot from Carson City was the Volkswagen sized horseflies that were buzzing everywhere in that good old-fashioned fake Wild West Town. Lots of livestock for authenticity, making lots of crap that then brought lots of horseflies. Buy the time we left we were all quite bitten up. I guess one that bit me was infected with the virus. Just a lucky little guy, that was me all right.

Encephalitis was no joke. In its mild form it can make you feel woozy for a week or so, in a severe form it can cause coma, or death. Progressing to coma at the age of two was considered just about as bad as it could get, before, well, you get the idea. My folks were given the prognosis; there was a good chance that I would never wake up.

But my parents being who they were: strict Irish Catholics, the first thing they did was start praying. There is a saint named Jude, who is considered the patron saint of “Hopeless Cases”, and I guess I fit the bill. My mom and dad (and a bunch of their friends and relatives) started storming the heavens to get St. Jude’s attention. My mom was at my bedside everyday, banging on St. Jude’s door.

The doctor came by everyday, took my temperature, blood pressure, checked my pupils for some sign of brain activity. He would just look at my folks and shake his head. No change, day after day. But week one passed, and I was still here. Then two weeks passed, then three; Dr. Knownothing would sigh and leave the room, and mom and dad hunkered down and kept at it. Suddenly, 23 days into the coma, I woke up, much to the surprise of Dr. Knownothing and the staff of Parsons Hospital. My parents’ prayers were answered, and they gave thanks.

All better? No, not really. Now the doctor had more good news. It was likely that because I had been in a coma with brain swelling for that length of time, I would probably be partially or fully paralyzed, and sure enough, I was. I had no movement from the neck down. So I was sent home, nothing more could be done. But did my folks buy that? No way, it was back to St. Jude again. As far as they were concerned, he was doing a hell of a better job for me than all the doctors were.

About once a week, Dr. Knownothing would stop by for a house call and check on me, which basically entailed more taking of my vital signs and shaking his head.

After I was home for about a month or so, the doctor stopped by for his regular visit. My mom left him alone to look me over while she got dinner together. He knelt down next to me as I lay motionless, took his doctor bag and placed it on the bed, and then got back up to look in his pocket for a pen. No pen. Maybe it was in his coat pocket, which he had thrown on my sister bed, behind him. Finding one in the coat, he turned back around, and reached for his bag. It was no longer on my bed.

He looked around, and found it on the floor on the other side of the bed. Scratching his head, he picked it up, knelt back down and placed it back on the bed, on top my leg, which was under the covers. I promptly kicked the bag back on the floor, which caused the doc to fall back on his butt in shock. He pushed himself up and called for my mom. She came running in, and he repeated the bag trick, which I promptly complied with by kicking it once again to the floor. “Okay, this is out of my hands now,” he stated, “I have no idea what’s going on here, but I’ve got little or nothing to do with it.” My mom just smiled, and winked up to heaven. Her and St. Jude, they were in charge now. Maybe they always were.

Dr. Knownothing was not done yet, however. He had more good news. Mom was now warned that because of the Encephalitis and my period in a coma, and although I was now recovering movement, his last diagnosis was that I might have brain damage. Those who know me to this day might have varying opinions on that matter I guess, but medically, I seemed to have dodged that bullet too. No medical reason was ever found for my full recovery. Dr. Knownothing just closed the file.

And how do I feel about all this? To this day I wear a St. Jude medal around my neck, given to me on my 40^th birthday, 38 or so years after I was written off. Scoff if you will, but St. Jude and I, we got this thing going on. I believe in him, because I’ve got to figure he believed in me.

Of course, the general sickness problem had not gone away, just put on hold until the coma/dying thing had been resolved. Now that I was no longer at death’s door (as Dr. Know-nothing used to refer to it), my parents tried to concentrate on narrowing down what the hell was going on with my sister and myself. If this were going on today, specialists would have been consulted; multiple tests would have been done. But this was 1962. Such things did not exist then, or if they did, not for folks of my parents’ income.

The trips to Dr. Knownothing continued month after month, year after year. We would get better, and then worse, and something else would be tried. Antibiotics? Check. Giving Vitamin B12 shots? Check. Giving Gamma Globulin shots? Check. Sun Lamp treatments? Check.

And so it went, and we continued to take two steps forward, and then two back. Then something rather remarkable happened, and it was because of the radio.

My mom was home with both of us kids all day, and by this time she had become pregnant with my soon to be sister, Helene. Consequently, it was often that she would need to hear another adult voice, just to keep her from going nuts. Her answer was the same as most moms’ was back then; she would have the radio on the talk station most of the day in the kitchen. Most of the time it was just background noise, a pleasant but uninteresting parade of one guest after another pushing this or advertising that. Sometimes she would pause from cooking dinner or cleaning and sit and just listen for a while, but most times, the radio and it’s hosts would just buzz pleasantly as she dealt with us or the housework.

One summer afternoon she was starting dinner, and the radio host had just introduced a doctor from a center at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in upper Manhattan. Mom was listening with only half an ear, picking up a word or phrase here or there. After a bit, some words like coughing, or a phrase such as “lack of nutritional absorption” caught her full attention. The doctor was Carol Denning, the head of a newly opened clinic in Columbia Presbyterian for Cystic Fibrosis. The disease had been identified as a particular syndrome in the 1930s and 40s, but was still not widely known.

My mom, bless her, went over, turned the radio up, and pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and grabbed a pencil with paper. She’s told me that she sat transfixed, taking notes, and it wasn’t long until she was convinced that Dr. Denning was describing my sister and myself to a T. At the end of the interview, Dr. Denning gave a phone number for the clinic. My mom went right to the phone. When a nurse answered, my mom said, “I just heard Dr. Denning on the radio and I think she was describing both of my children.” She was told to come up to the center the next day.

When my father came home that night, my mom told him about the radio show and Dr. Denning. They immediately called Dr. Knownothing. He had heard of this thing called Cystic Fibrosis, but did not know a lot about it. He recommended my parents take us to the clinic, because they would surely know more. Gee, thanks, my mother thought; no kidding. The next day my father took off from work and we all headed for Columbia Presbyterian.

The standard test to diagnosis Cystic Fibrosis back then was a sweat test. The way it works is a chemical, that causes sweating, is put on a small area on an arm or leg. An electrode is then put over that spot. This lets a doctor apply a weak electrical current to the area to cause sweating. I remember it sort of hurt, but having endured countless needles, I could hack it.

The second part of the test consists of cleaning the area and collecting the sweat on a piece of gauze. Thirty minutes later, the collected sweat is sent to a hospital laboratory to measure the chloride in the sweat. CF patients have a lot more chloride in their sweat than a normal person. Too much chloride in the sample, and you’ve got CF. Both Maureen’s and my test came back positive.

Congrats, Mr. and Mrs. Cotter, both of your kids have Cystic Fibrosis, and lucky you, you’ve got one on the way! Can we go for a trifecta?

So here’s the good news. My folks, after years of frustrating, endless trips to the doctor, finally had a correct diagnosis. But then there was the bad news. In 1964, most CF children didn’t make it to double digits. My parents made one last trip to Dr. Knownothing. His final, knowledgeable advice to my parents was to take us home and enjoy us, because they would not have us for long. My folks looked at each other, then at him, turned and walked out his door. They never returned again.

Years later, my mom and I ran into Dr. Knownothing in front of what was then Booth Memorial Hospital, where we had just visited a sick relative. He was just leaving the hospital, too. We were, to put it mildly, shocked. Dr. Knownothing now looked like he weighed 85 pounds. My mom, as politely as possible, asked him what was wrong. He told us he had skin cancer. Remember that sun lamp in his exam room that terrified me? Well, he used to spend a great deal of his lunch hour baking under it, day after day. He had another home in Florida, and Dr. Knownothing loved a good tan. I’d speak of irony and justice, but truthfully, it all just made me very sad. His error of not keeping up his education had hurt my sister and me, but it was killing him. We wished him all the best, and went on our way.

So now my folks had to deal with a new reality; not just two sick kids, but two kids with an incurable disease that was likely to kill them. What to do? Panic? Bang their fist against the walls? Maybe scream at the top of their lungs and run around in circles? Good plan; but probably not the most productive use of their time. No, instead they squared their shoulders and re-oriented the center of their universe, and headed back to Columbia Presbyterian. It was time to get this party started.

End of Chapter One

The Tree

I have no idea when it was planted. From the size of it when I first remember seeing it, my guess was it was part of the early landscaping done for the New York World’s Fair in 1963. If that was the case, we were close in age, one of the many things we had in common.

We both grew up in Flushing, Queens, not very far from each other. Some other characteristics were similar too. I’m sure that if you were to meet me for the first time, nothing about me would really stand out. I’m not very tall, or too short, not too fat or too thin. No real prominent features at all, actually, and that’s just fine with me. I’ve never been one who wanted a lot of attention anyway.

As far as not standing out, it was quite similar. It was not located in a central part of Flushing Meadow Park, but instead just on the periphery, if you were to map it. It sat on a comparably small patch of grass, not too far from a walking and bike path, close to a parking field. It was not very large, but created just enough shade to make it acceptable as a picnic spot. Its trunk was not so tall to make it difficult for a kid to climb into its branches, nor so short as to make that climb not worth making.

All in all, it was rather ordinary, simple, and unremarkable. No one would be fighting over sitting beneath it because it was a “perfect spot”. No one would be jockeying for a chance to place their blanket beneath it because of its huge umbrella of shade. But for me, that might have been its biggest charm. It was straightforward, uncomplicated, and unpretentious. To me, it simply became the “Tree”.

Although exactly how it became the “Tree” is lost in my memory. I do know that when my sisters and I were young, my father would regularly take a trip down to the park every Sunday afternoon, weather permitting. That weekly jaunt was more for my mom’s sake than anything else. Sunday afternoons was her “alone” time, when my dad would give her a break from having three kids running around our 2-bedroom apartment, doing what kids will do.

So originally, my dad picked the spot we would drive to each week, probably out of convenience, since it was just off a parking field. It had everything we needed, a nice patch of grass and a simple tree. Slowly, it changed from just a place we visited. It wasn’t long before we began to think of that patch of grass as our patch, that tree as our tree. We had staked out our territory, planted our emotional flag, and claimed it for our own, so to speak.

Having grown up around brick and concrete, that place in the park was our little oasis of green, and we cherished it. Speaking for myself, I remember sometimes feeling like I actually needed it to relieve my stress. Of course, today that strikes me as ridiculous, considering my stress was that of a ten year old. But it’s all about perspective, I guess.

As time went on and I got older, friends came into my life. Often times on Sunday, my friend Eddie would be over at my house, and my dad would announce he was off to the park to “bat around a few balls” and we were to come along. So Eddie and I would jump into the car with my Dad and my sisters, and head down to the park, were we would play Frisbee, or have a game of catch. My dad would grab his golf club and wiffle golf balls, drop a few down on the grass by the Tree, and one by one, hit them from one end of the grass patch, and then back again. I still can see him in he usual attire: a straw fedora, white tee shirt, checkered knee length shorts, white tube socks and loafers. Unless he was careful, his very Irish skin would get a painful red hue. No one used sun block back then, or ever thought of the dangers of skin cancer. Years later, he would pay for those days in the sunshine with a couple of easily removed basal cell “patches” but in the 60s, a sunburn was “just getting some color”.

When my family would go to the park together and have a picnic, we would of course, go to the Tree. Our picnics consisted of sandwiches, soda, and maybe a bag of chips, if we felt extravagant. Keep it simple, that was our motto, and you’ll have more fun. Truth is told, my folks were right: the simpler, the better. Just grab a patch of grass, some shade, a bike to ride around on, and a friend along for the ride. It didn’t get any better.

And so it went, year after year, until there came a point when going to the park with my family became uncool. Now I would go to the park on my own, or with a friend, anyway.

Still, the Tree was where I would go first, like stopping off to visit an old pal, and hang out for a while. Eddie and I would often climb its branches, and at one point, I think we carved our initials in one of them, to make it officially “our Tree”. I had visions, even back then, of visiting years later, climbing those same branches and still seeing my name carved there. It was a nice, comforting thought that some things don’t change; there is continuity in the universe.

As time passed, almost unconsciously, the tree took on other roles. When I started dating someone, I would often plan a picnic, and of course we would end up at the Tree. Sounds a bit crazy now, but a girl’s reaction to the Tree became sort of a litmus test.

As I had stated earlier, while the Tree was unremarkable, like a thousand others, it was lovely. I would always mention to my date that the spot was a special to me, and why.

I remember one old girlfriend. I had told her of our “history”, but after we arrived at the Tree and set up shop, she looked quizzically around and stated, “This is it?” I answered in the affirmative. She just shook her head.

Did I pay attention to that comment? Nope. Should I have? Yep, I should have, most assuredly. Years later, I finally realized that we were not on the same page. We were not even reading from the same book, actually. That was, coincidentally, just about the same time she broke up with me. Looking back, if I had just paid attention, that little comment really told me all I had to know. I was just too naive to realize it, or more likely, too blind to see it. Being an optimist can be a disadvantage, but you can’t wish sensitivity into someone’s heart. Oh, but for the use of a time machine, for just one day. I would have many things to tell myself.

When I first met the woman who would later become my wife, and wanted her to meet Eddie and his wife for the first time, Eddie and I agreed that we would have a picnic at, of course, the Tree. How did that go? Well, Toni and I will be married 23 years this October, so it went pretty well. She thought it was a lovely spot. “What a pretty tree”, she said, “I always loved trees.” That’s when I knew I was onto something.

Life has a funny way of moving on, whether you want it to or not. Time would pass, and I would realize it had been months, even years, since I had gone back to visit the Tree. Once, Ed and I got together one weekday afternoon, played hooky from work, for the sole purpose of going back to visit our old Flushing Meadow Park haunts. Of course, our first visit was the Tree. It looked a little worse for wear, bare in spots, but that was okay, because actually, so were we.

We climbed up its braches as best we could; we were now a lot bigger than we were the last time we attempted the task, and the Tree more frail, many of its branches had been trimmed. We tried to find our initials, but neither of us could quite remember exactly where we had carved them, and most likely the Tree had healed over the spot by now, anyway. But there it stood, and twenty-five years or so later, so did we. That in and of itself was an accomplishment.

Months, then years passed. One day I decided on a day off to drive by the old spot and see how the Tree was doing. It was a brisk Fall day, sunny but cold. I pulled into the old parking lot, and it being a weekday, I had the place to myself. I didn’t like what I saw.

The Tree was bare, but it was impossible to tell if it was the season, or something much worse. Its branches had been savagely pruned, the grass around it dug up, construction barriers and orange cones were scattered about. Something was obviously being planned, and looking at the whole area, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I stood in the parking lot next to my car with my hands in my pockets, planted in that spot. I couldn’t bring myself to get closer, I was afraid if I did, the Tree would look even worse. After a few minutes, I got back in my car, and drove away.

Eddie (now Ed) and his family live in a beautiful house in Westchester, the type of green place we always wished we had growing up. My wife and I had found our own little piece of green in Queens, in a lovely garden apartment co-op. In the last couple of years since my last visit, I had seen a great deal of construction going on in Flushing Meadows. A Recreation Center was being built, and as I passed it on the highway, I could see they were erecting something in the park right about where the Tree used to be. After what I had saw that fall day, I was pretty sure what I would find, but I waited until the all the building was completed before I returned to the park. So just last week, my wife and I went back, one more time.

I would love for this story to wrap itself up in a tidy, happy bow, but life is too seldom as we wish it. When we got to where the Tree was, it was hard to discern exactly where it used to be. The parking lot was gone, the bike path removed; there was hardly any way of telling exactly where anything was anymore.

While the Tree was gone, several new saplings had replaced it. It was, actually, a pretty little spot. In years to come I’m sure many a picnic will be enjoyed there. We both stood there a while, listening to the wind in the new trees, it was a lovely evening. Then my wife took my arm, and we went home.

If you were to visit me now, especially in the nice weather, you won’t find me in my house. But that’s okay, I won’t be hard to find. More than likely, I’ll be sitting with my wife or my neighbors just out front, relaxing in one of our lawn chairs. You see, directly out our front door, you’ll find me in a quiet, shady spot, under an enormous and beautiful Green Ash tree. From what some of my older neighbors tell me, it was planted at the same time as our co-op complex was built, around 1954 or so. So it’s got a few years on me, but that’s okay. In the 5 plus years we have lived here, I’ve grown to love it, and I, along with my neighbors and the co-op workers, keep it in good shape.

I’m almost fifty-one years old. I was born with some health problems, and years ago lost a sister from the same disorder. Life has taught me a few lessons, some rather hard ones, and some others that have given me peace.

I’ve learned that sometimes, you will lose the things you love, and they can never be replaced. But sometimes, if your heart is open, and you’re blessed, you can find love again. Love has a way of wanting to be around, if you’ll just let it. It’s true of people, and can be true of other things. It’s even true of something as simple as a tree.

Walking on Water

In many cultures, as boys approach adolescence, there is a test of manhood. American Indians, for example, have what they call “Vision Quests.” The Japanese have the “Genpuku”, the Amish “Rumspringa”. These test usually involve a ritual that the youth has to perform, to show his compatriots that he has chosen to enter into the next stage of his life. Some of these tests can be simple, others can be brutal, some involve hallucinogenics, and some just wish they did, because they’d probably be a heck of a lot more fun.

Of course, any of those tests would be a problem for a 13 year-old kid growing up in Queens. Indian Peyote was kind of hard to come by in Flushing; although, to be fair, there was an assortment of mind-scrambling substitutes, if you knew a certain type of people. Besides, if I went the mind-altering route, my Irish Catholic father would have killed me, and that was no exaggeration– he would have turned me into an inkblot.

So what was a budding teenager to do? You had to be inventive, that’s what. As the winter of 1973-74 approached, even if only subconsciously, my friend Eddie and I were making plans. The test had to involve something big. What did big mean? Big at the age of 13 is defined at my current age of 50+ as something really, REALLY stupid. And could we come up with something THAT stupid? I proudly state: you’re darn right we could!

Let me fill in a little background here. Eddie and I both lived a few blocks from Flushing Meadow Park, and because of that proximity, it sort of became our unofficial backyard. Back in the 70s, parents didn’t seem to worry nearly as much where their kids were 24 hours a day. I just saw a TV commercial where a mother was relieved that her daughter’s cell phone was on a certain network, because mom could take comfort knowing that the GPS tracking application on the mom’s phone would keep her constantly informed of her daughter’s whereabouts. By the way, her daughter was at the local MALL with her friends, not on safari in the wilds of Africa hunting lions. I had to laugh. Back in the day, I’d tell mom that I was “go’n down to the park,” and that would be it, for at least the next 5 hours. Different times, I guess.

It would often be the case that we would spend most of a weekend down at Flushing Meadows, and during the summer, plenty of weekdays too. There was an abundance of stuff to do there, even though the World’s Fair had closed 10 years earlier. Grab your mitt, a ball, your bat, or jump on your bike. Or just put on your best worn-in sneakers, and just walk. It was fun to simply hang around, there was always plenty to look at, investigate, explore. The park was still full of what could be considered the dead carcasses of the ‘63-‘64 fair, some structures even went all the way back to the one in they had in ‘39.

One sad example that comes to mind was the United States Pavilion. After the ‘63-‘64 fair ended, the city decided they did not want that particular building demolished. Unlike almost all of the beautiful structures that I remember so fondly as a young child, that one (and just a handful of others) could stay. After all, the U.S. Pavilion was a beautiful building, one meant to stand the test of time. Surely, they’d be able to use for… something. So let’s just put a chain link fence around it for now, said the city, and we’ll figure that out. Eventually.

And so it sat, month after month, year after year. Rumors started to spread that there were people who had taken up residence inside, and the cops had to patrol it on a semi-regular basis to roust them out. I even heard a story about a guy they called “The Phantom of the Fair” who eluded the police for months, setting booby traps of all kinds to evade capture. My friends and I used to think that we caught a glimpse of “The Phantom” from time to time, if he ever even existed. In the end, as I bet you have guessed by now, the city let the poor Pavilion decay to the point that they had to pull it down before it fell down. Ladies and gentlemen–New York City planning in the 70s, ya’ couldn’t beat it with a stick!

The park was vast, and to us, that was a good thing. It would often happen that on a weekday, you might walk around the fairgrounds all day and hardly see another soul. If you got down to the park on a nice weekday, you could have your pick of fields to choose from. If you had your baseball stuff, more often than not you were able to snag an empty baseball field. Most times, however, we’d just set ourselves up on one of the hundreds of grass squares of empty land that were everywhere, another remnant of the long gone fair.

Often, we just walked. If there was one thing you could do down at Flushing Meadow, it was walk, a lot. It is often said that men don’t talk enough. That was never a problem for my friends and I. I spent many a day sometimes with a group, sometimes just Eddie and myself, walking and talking, often going no place in particular; wherever our feet took us. After a while, Eddie and I started to build a particular path we would follow most days. It was basically from my house, 8 blocks or so to the park, and then south down its length, following the concrete shoreline of the Flushing River, till we came to Meadow Lake. Meadow Lake was one of two large lakes that were at the southern tip of the park; the other one was Willow Lake. We would follow the shoreline of Meadow Lake all the way around, and then return the way we came. All in all it was about 7 miles or so; a nice stroll. We walked that path so many times that it became subconscious, sometimes I’d be coming back out of the park and not actually remembering any of the time we spent in there, and no Peyote was involved.

Of course, sometimes we’d do things other than just walk, like fish, for example. Fish? There were fish in Flushing River? Yes, believe it or not, there were, a couple of hardy types.

Flushing River in the 70s had, what is commonly known as a “reputation”. TV host Merv Griffin made “Flushing River” jokes on his show all the time, and anyone who lived in my neighborhood with a nose knew when the river was at low tide. Boy, did you know.

So, often we would get quizzical looks, snickers, sometimes downright laughter as we would arrived at the banks of that river with our fishing rods, and cast our lines into its murky waters. Most people thought the only thing you could catch in that river was a bad case of Cholera or Dysentery. Not true, if you were an optimist and willing to believe. The river was full of Sun Fish (or Sunnys, as we called them) Catfish, and Perch. Mid-sized fish, the type you always threw back. Besides, they DID come out of Flushing River. We were optimists, not idiots.

The park was the place we spent most of the summer. Even when the fall season arrived, the park still was the place to go, where millions of fallen leaves from hundreds of trees made piles of damp, scratchy, crunchy, dirty fun. But as the year ticked toward its end and the temperature dropped, the park saw us less and less.

Winters in New York City can be rather brutal. The temperature often gets into the single digits, sometimes below zero. The wind can cut through you like badly sharpened knife. TV weathermen will often warn viewers that skin exposure for more than a few minutes could cause painful frostbite. Best to stay indoors, turn up the heat, put on your fuzzy slippers, and hunker down for the duration. Only an idiot, a fool, or a certified crazy person would purposefully trek off on one of those single-digit days to a wind-swept place like a wide-open park, just for the sake of seeing if it could be done. You could be any of those demented types, or instead, you could just be 13 years old and daring yourself to do it. Yeah, that was reason enough for us.

I’m not sure which one of us came up with the idea, but the other one of us agreed almost instantly. The plan was a simple one: pick one of the coldest days of the winter, preferably one of those single-digit ones, and walk our normal route, down to the park, hike down the length of the river, all the way around Meadow Lake, and trek back home again. It was an easy arrangement, no problem whatsoever.

Our plot solidified, all we had to do was watch the weather reports on the news each evening, and listen for the prediction of a bone-chilling day. Of course, we told none of our family members of our plans, knowing full well that this type of lunacy would be quelled instantly by either set of parents. Of course they would. They were not insane, or 13 years old, like us.

December passed, as did the last of 1973, and soon after, January was gone too. But we were not disheartened, because as most New Yorkers know, February is the cruelest month. Watching the 10 o’clock news on channel 5 the first week of February, I heard what I was waiting for: single digit temperatures for the coming weekend. The next day at school, Eddie and I agreed… Saturday would be the day for the winter test of manhood, or whatever it was we thought we were doing.

Saturday, February 9th, 1974 dawned a brisk 6º, and was set to be jumping up to a balmy high of 14º. Of course, that did not take into account that magical “wind chill factor”. Although I don’t think they talked about that “factor” back in ’74, believe me, it was there just the same. There was also a dusting of a couple of inches snow on the ground, not enough to make any real impact on the walk, but the black ice it would have created when it melted and refroze the day before would just add to the dangerous, bone cracking fun.

Eddie was to arrive at my apartment about 1 p.m., suited up and ready for battle. We had gone with the conventional wisdom, which was to dress in layers. So we had layers, and lots of them. Starting from the top, I had my hat, which was a wool cap. Next, I wore a regular tee shirt, covered by long sleeved underwear shirt, covered by a wool sweatshirt. Then I donned briefs, covered by a pair of long underwear, covered by a pair of Wrangler jeans. Lastly, I armed myself with 2 scarves, one inside the coat, one outside, my lined leather jacket with hood, and lastly, 2 pairs of gloves, 2 pair of socks, covered with winter snow boots. And thus I was prepared to face the frozen tundra.

As I stated, we had to have a cover story, and since I got dressed earlier behind my locked bedroom door, the story I told my parents was simple: Eddie and I were going over to our friend Timmy’s house, just a couple of blocks away. My mother even looked at me about that short trip to Timmy’s quizzically.

“You know, it’s freezing cold, you’re not going to be playing outside, are you?” she asked.

“Naw, too cold for that… we’re not crazy!” I answered, while looking away, lest a snicker explode from my face. Man, I thought, I’ve got her completely fooled! Yep, I contemplated, how COOL will this be!

Now, did it ever enter my juvenile mind that my mom might be justifiably worried that such a foolish trip might be ill advised, even dangerous? Did I consider that not telling ANYONE where we were going or what we were doing would mean that the authorities might not find our really COOL frozen bodies until the spring thaw? I think you know the answer to that question.

After Eddie rang the bell, I threw on my coat, grabbed my scarves and gloves, and with a “Bye Mom”, I was out the door.

Eddie waited for me by the roof stairs, dressed essentially the same as me. “How bad is it out there?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not too bad,” Eddie answered, not very convincingly. His red face and slurred speech told another story, and he had only walked a few blocks to get to me. Not important, I told myself. This was SUPPOSED to be as cold a day as possible, so we were right on track, you bet.

“Let’s time this.” Eddie stated. “I bet we can do the whole thing in a couple of hours, tops!” I nodded in agreement. Eddie dug to find his watch under several layers of clothes. “It’s 1:06 right now, so let’s shoot for 3:15, 3:30” he said. Sounded good to me, a completely doable plan. So, with everything decided and tied up in a nice organized bow, off we went, bounding down the stairs.

When we first stepped outside into the covered courtyard of my building, I smiled to myself. Not so bad, this will be easy! A few feet more, and we hit the street, and the wind. I say wind, but that was only the technical term. In reality, we both instantly got slammed in the face by a bucket full of hot, tiny needles, thrown with body staggering force. My glasses pushed up on my face, and for a second, I had trouble catching my breath. This was my first gentle hint that the trip might not be as easy as I thought. I turned my back to the blast for just a second, and looked over at Eddie. He did the same thing. “Not too bad, huh?” I yelled through my scarves.

“Just a gust, it does that sometimes,” Eddie yelled back.

“Okay, good,” I answered, quietly praying that he was right. Sure enough, the wind died down, and we both turned around. With a nod, we headed for the park.

The first few blocks were okay, about what I expected. The more we walked, the warmer I started to feel, which was great. I figured by the time we hit the park, I’d be practically toasty warm. There would be an occasional blast of wind in the face, but we got pretty good at turning with it if it got too bad, and just continue walking backwards. I guess it goes without saying but we didn’t talk much; between the wind and our scarves it was hard to hear each other anyway. After a few blocks, we turned down the last road to the park entrance. Walking under the highway underpass, we entered Flushing Meadows.

The first thing I noticed was that the park was empty, and I mean there was not another soul, not a car, not a squirrel, not even a pigeon. It looked like for all intent and purposes we were the only living things who were stupid enough to be here, and for some lunatic reason, that made me proud.

The wind was back, and this time, the gust seemed pretty steady. It seemed to me that all the heat equity I had built up on the walk to the park entrance was gone in an instant. The wind pushed us, and we had to put our heads down, just to brace ourselves.

Ed looked my way, and yelled, “You okay?” I gave him a gloved thumb up in response. Eddie pointed toward the start of Flushing River down the path, and we pushed ahead.

Walking was slow, a lot slower than I thought it would be. The wind was constantly pushing against us, and my muscles all felt sluggish, like the connection they had to my brain was filled with static. We had made it down to the riverbank, and were about a mile down its length. We both kept about the same pace, a slow trudge. Because I had put the hood of my coat up and could only see straight ahead, I had to look to my right occasionally to make sure Eddie was still there, and he had to look to his left to do the same. It was hard to hear, I had pulled my hat down over most of my ears, and the hood added to the dampening effect. Even with all that insulation, I would still hear the whistle of the wind working its way into any hole it could find in my padding, and my ears burned jaggedly from the cold. A jet flew overhead on its way to LaGuardia Airport, and I noticed the engines sounded different, like they were at a higher in pitch. The frigid air was making everything weird.

That old “wind chill factor” was definitely in control now. I didn’t have a thermometer with me, of course, but my guess was it was well below zero ever since we had hit the park. Everything hurt now, in that “numb pain” sort of way, and I realized with slight alarm that we were not even a quarter way done with our trek. As much as I willed my feet to move more quickly, they just responded with a “you’ve GOT to be kidding…” attitude, and kept the same, mindless pace.

At one point on the route, we would have cross a cement bridge/dam that spanned the width of the river. The dam was set up to catch any large pieces of floating debris, and let the “clean” water through. In the middle of the bridge there was a void of about 4 feet, in which a thin metal grate had been placed to catch the garbage. It was a short jump over the grate to make it to the other side, normally an easy leap. It was only after we got on the bridge that day that we realized it was covered with a nice, shiny coat of black ice.

We looked at each other, but did not have to say a word; not that we could actually talk anyway. Both our mouths were mostly frozen shut by this point. Leaping over the gap from one side without any traction would be difficult, landing on the other side and staying on our feet even more so. The river itself was one solid sheet of ice, except here, where the constant banging up against the cement dam wall and grate had broken the ice’s surface enough to allow water to flow through the gap.

I looked down at the icy cement. So what, I thought– the worst that could happen is I’ll jump the gap and lose my footing, and either end up on my butt, or slip and fall in the river, no biggie.

13-year-olds are indestructible, as we all know.

Always the bravest, Eddie went first. He planted his feet, crouched, and jumped. On the other side, he did a small “uh-oh” ice dance, as his feet fought for purchase. In just a second or two, he was still, stable. Then he was waving for me to follow. He did it without much problem, I thought, this will be a cinch.

Parroting Eddie, I planted my feet, crouched, and jumped. At the last millisecond, I felt my jumping foot slip. I was in the air when I realized that the slip had cause me to leap short, and I would barely make it to the other side. I leaned forward so I would at least land mostly on the concrete and miss the water. I crashed down on the cement on my knees and arms, almost doing a face plant. If I wasn’t so numb, that would have REALLY hurt. As it was, Eddie helped me to my feet, and I brushed myself off, all the time doing the “I’m fine, I’m fine” wave.

Assured I was okay by my waves and nods, Eddie stepped off the bridge on to the other bank, a nice-sized step down, and I followed behind. That’s when I realized I was not so okay, my left knee felt as if it was creaking like a rusty hinge, and almost went out from under me. And oh boy, oh boy, did it hurt now, you bet. I winced and let out a little yelp, but thanks to my many layers and the constant wind, Eddie never heard a peep.

This side of the riverbank was narrower that the first one because there was a chain linked fence to our left, so we had to walk single file. This was a good thing; otherwise Eddie would have noticed I now had a significant limp. I was determined NOT to look like I was in pain; I was WAY too “macho” for that.

We had made it most of the way down the river by now, we could see Meadow Lake just around a couple more large bends in the stream. Walking along the rocky river bank was getting harder, and more painful. Just ignore it; it will go away, I kept saying to myself. But my knee had a mind of its own, and was all about keeping my attention with a constant call of “Hey you! Yes, YOU! I’m heeere, HELL-OOO!”

I began to look for ways that I could quietly shorten the trip as much as possible, and without letting on that at this point, all I wanted to do was go home. But I was also stubbornly thick enough not to let on that this was my plan; had to keep up the tough guy stuff.

It was at this point that I came up with an idea, which in retrospect was probably hatched in a mostly frozen brain. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, I thought, everybody knows that from school. The river made a couple of wide turns, and the rocky riverbank painful to walk on. But look at that nice, flat, hard frozen river! I could cut out quite a bit of walking just by taking a shortcut, just cut across the river at the big bends; straight ahead, point a to point b. Not the WHOLE river, mind you, THAT would be crazy! The answer was easy, no problem whatsoever.

I tapped Eddie on the shoulder, and he turned to look at me. All I said was “I’m tryin’ a shortcut,” and pointed down at the river. I’m not quite sure he understood what I was gesturing, and I’m pretty sure it was impossible for him to hear me. The problem was, Eddie’s brain was in much the same condition as mine, so he was not much help in stopping my stupid train barreling down its tracks. He just nodded, and off I went.

I stepped down onto the ice, and started walking. It was not nearly as slippery as I had feared, by let’s face it, it was frozen Flushing River– it was less a smooth consistency than it was chunky.

It was about at this point that I noticed I had pulled even with Eddie, and I looked over at him on the bank. It was hard to tell through scarves and hoods, but I could swear he shot me a look which if verbal would have been: “What the HELL are you doing?!” I just smiled to myself, and kept walking. I had the whole thing figured out, I thought to myself. This will be a cinch from here on out.

I had now passed Eddie, who was still forced to follow the bank of the river as it turned. I just kept walking straight ahead, point a to point b, no problem. Then something happened.

I have no memory of the exact circumstances, what foot stepped where, but suddenly, I was aware I was a couple of feet lower than I had been just a second earlier. And the funny thing was that the ice on the river was now coming right up against my belt. I was no longer walking ON the river; I was now IN the river. I was just waist high but definitely in the river, and standing on the bottom.

Before I had much time to even contemplate my circumstances, Eddie was there, putting his hand out, and grabbing him with one hand and pushing myself against the ice with the other, I was back on top of the ice. We both headed back to the shore, shuffling all he way, lest we have a repeat of my “adventure”.

Back safely on shore, Eddie pulled down his scarf and asked the obvious, just what I thought he was saying with his eyes earlier: “What the HELL where you doing!?” At this point I was forced to own up to my earlier injury, my brilliant shortcut plan, the whole macho stupidity thing. Here’s a tip: if a plan sounds really asinine to yourself as you repeat it back to someone else, it was not macho– it was just asinine.

Now I figured I might have a real problem. It was still sub-zero with the wind chill factor, we were pretty sure, and now the bottom half of me was soaked. Well, to be honest, not really soaked anymore. From the moment I climbed out of the river, I had noticed something. My pants were changing, feeling different, not like normal jeans anymore. No longer like cotton, more like aluminum, or tin. And to my amazement, I was not as cold in them as I thought I would be. The water in the pants had frozen almost instantly, and was acting as an excellent insulator against the wind. Still, I would not recommend this particular method of winter protection. It’s only for the cream of the truly stupid crop.

I turned to continue with the trek. Eddie tapped me on the shoulder. “Where are you going?” he asked, looking truly amazed.

“To finish the…” I started to say, then saw that same “What the HELL” look in his eyes. Apparently, one of us was just this close to being totally unhinged. I was not sure which one, but I think Eddie was positive. In retrospect I can honestly say I must have been totally out of my mind.

“No. We’re going back. NOW”, Eddie stated. I did not argue. The journey was to be incomplete, and that’s just the way it had to be. Looking back, by that point I had pushed my luck not once, but twice. I had a called strike one, a screwed up knee, then a strike two, a Popsicle bottom half. If I had a third strike I might have been attacked by a snow-mad squirrel, or something. It was best to cut our losses now. We headed back the way we came.

The journey back is a fuzzy memory. The bitter cold seeped in deeper and deeper, but now at least the wind was at our back. The return leap over the bridge gap must have gone well, but I have no memory of it. Walking became just the mindless repetition of putting one foot in front of the other, feeling my pants clank along with every step. My limp formed its own rhythm, and hardly slowed me down. For some odd reason, I kept picturing the movie “The Wizard of Oz” in my head, particularly the scene where the Tin Man starts to freeze up and needs his oil can. I started mumbling to myself “oil can, oil can” over and over. Eddie looked my direction, and asked, “What did you say?”

“Oil can,” I said, and pointed to my frozen jeans. After pausing for a second of thought, Eddie started to laugh. That’s how you know you have a good friend: he gets your sick mind without you having to explain it.

At last, we came to the park exit. I was happy, yet disappointed. I had rightfully taken full responsibility for our failure; and macho was a distant emotional memory. Now all that kept me moving, all I kept thinking about was the inside lobby of my building. There, on either side of the front door, sat two enormous steam radiators, covered by coffin-like radiator covers. The sole goal still burning in my increasingly icy brain was to plop myself down on one of those radiators, and slowly and blissfully thaw. Never mind that sitting on one of those red-hot steam boxes might give me 2^nd degree burns; those burns would feel soooo good. I poked Eddie. “Lobby, my house…” I slurred.

“Radiators…” he answered as he nodded.

And so it went, until blocks later, we shuffled into the covered courtyard of my apartment building. For just a second, panic flashed in my brain– what if the boiler was broken again? It was not as crazy a notion as one might think. Sometimes during a normal winter our sole source of heat in my apartment was our gas kitchen stove with its door open, plus a single electric heater. When the building boiler was overtaxed, sometimes it would just die. Lord knows it was being taxed today. I kept my frozen digits crossed.

I fumbled for my door key, and we were in the lobby. The air inside was alive with a hissing sound, the sign of blessed steam heat. Without a word we headed to the radiator to the left, our normal choice of refuge on many a winter day spent assaulting friends or each other with snowballs, or various other frigid activities. We collapsed onto the hissing box. The covered surface was crazy hot, almost dangerous to the touch. I was in heaven.

We sat for a couple of minutes, just making various ooh, aah and uhh sounds. Finally, I spoke.

“Sorry I screwed us up”, I muttered, “Guess that’s the end of that idea.”

“No way!” Eddie exclaimed. “It’s only the beginning of February, we’ll try again!” He sounded so positive, I believed him.

“What time is it”, I asked, “how did we actually do?

Ed looked at his watch, and looked, and looked. “What?” I asked again. He pointed his wrist at me. It was 4:35, an hour later than we figured, and we had only made it half way. The cold must have created time a warp, which was the only explanation.

After a while of sitting there, our nerves woke up, and the radiator got too hot to sit on. Besides, remember that we had dressed in layers. Great idea if you don’t get them wet. The result was my thawed bottom half felt as if I was wearing 50 pounds of wet sand. I wanted to change, so we gathered our drying gloves, scarves and hats and headed upstairs.

“How was Timmy’s?” my mom asked as we hurried past her to my room.

“Normal, boring stuff,” I called back. I’d dare not let her get a good look at me, or worse, smell me; I had the aroma of a dirty wet dog.

We went to my room, where I grabbed a new set of pants, underwear and socks. “Be right back,” I whispered to Eddie, and headed to the bathroom. There I changed, and then I rung as much of Flushing river out of my soaked clothes and down the bathtub drain as possible. We had an aluminum and plastic clothes dryer standing in the tub, so I left my clothes there, praying they would mostly dry before my parents needed to use the facilities.

Still in the bathroom, I practiced hiding my limp. That would be tough, keeping my black and blue knee a secret even more so. My Mom had makeup, I’d figure something out.

Mom being whom she was, when I came out of the bathroom, Ed was in the kitchen, enjoying some Carnation hot coca she had made for him. A cup was waiting for me, too. Normally, made just with boiling water, it would be way too hot to immediately drink, but I downed it anyway. The burn all the way down felt really good.

As you probably guessed, we never did attempt another walk that year, but by the next year the painful memories had faded enough that we tried it again. This time we made it, all the way around Meadow lake and home again. It was a trek that I wouldn’t even entertain the thought of at my age, so I’m glad Eddie and I did it then.

Sometimes, I miss those blissfully ignorant days. You’ve got to grab them when you’re still too naive to know better. When you still believe that if you just try hard enough, you can do anything, like walking on water.