Christmas 2010

Christmas is here again. I thought as Elizabeth and I were wrapping presents how perfect life was, and we did not know it. Sometimes it feels like the space between us and Nicholas is thinner, somehow. I think about how excited he and Alex would get about Christmas, the delicious tension between believing in Santa and trying to lift up our bed to see if there might be presents hidden there. Must close, as it's late. That's all for now.

My big boy

This is Nicholas at two and a half, sitting on the stairs at our house on Irving Street, outside Davis Square in Somerville. It was summer, and Nick is holding drumsticks. He had a toy drum set (borrowed from Alex, I think) which he loved to bang on. Some of you will recognize the drumsticks as chopsticks - but you also may remember that chopsticks make fine drumsticks. He's wearing his favorite red striped shirt - red was always his favorite color, from the time he was little.

In my mind's eye, this smile and those dancing eyes are Nick at every age. So many smiles.

It is three years today since Nick's death.

Nicholas links

http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/article.php?date=2007-11-30§ion=1&id=1

King of Terrors

Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
Rev. Henry Scott Holland, on the death of Edward VII, 1910

It was such an ordinary day. Tuesday the 20th of November, 2007. Nicholas came home from Bowdoin for Thanksgiving, on the bus. He arrived at South Station just before noon. I was working at 185 Kneeland Street, across Atlantic Avenue from the station, and Nick walked over to see me. He was carrying a duffle bag of clothes and his messenger bag, crammed as usual with books, his laptop, iPod, and so on. He had called from the bus, and we had agreed we would meet at the office and then go home together. He came up to my office on the seventh floor, we said hello to a few people, then left. I had arranged to take the afternoon off, and the following day. We were both hungry. I suggested we walk up to Chacarero, on Province Street, and get a sandwich before heading home. It was cold, and the walk was a hike - it might have been smarter to get on the subway at South Station. The restaurant was quiet. We ate our sandwiches, chatted a bit with Juan, and then walked up to Park Street. I called Elizabeth to say we were catching the train. We were pretty loaded down, between my briefcase and Nick's stuff. The station was filling up with students heading home, but the ride out to Alewife wasn't crowded. We talked a bit about how the term was going. Nick was feeling good about it - Organic Chem and French were hard, but he thought he could stick with them. We talked about Abby and the cats. Ordinary conversation. We picked up the car at Alewife and drove home. I can't remember what we did when we got home. So wonderfully ordinary.

Nicholas, you are never out of mind.

We love you,

Dad

Surprise finds

Memory is funny. Things lie half forgotten, only to spring to life again unexpectedly. I was searching through old photos last week, and came across this one.
This was December 2002, at a Central Artery children's holiday party (a Santa-centered holiday, obviously). The organizers had asked for volunteers, and I talked Nick into coming in to help. This was Christmas of his eight grade - he was 12. We had the usual crowd of small children - this was the year before the opening of I-93, so the project was still in full swing, with lots of field offices, in addition to the staff at the 185 Kneeland Street building.
Nick agreed - we figured he'd be wrapping presents or serving cake and juice. Bill Edwards, who ran the project controls group for the Artery, was Santa (I never did find out why Bill did this, but he did it for years and was an outstanding Santa). Somewhere in the course of the morning, someone asked Nick if he would help Bill - be Santa's elf, and Nick must have said yes.
I liked this photo because it captures Nick's gentleness, particularly with children. He continued to play the elf for several more years, and I think was the elf the last year the project held a party - probably 2005.

Labor Day again

It's Labor Day again. That means my birthday has come and gone - I am now 55. Hard to believe.
We first went to Ferry Beach in 1992. Nick was 3, Alex 6. Gail had contacted Elizabeth about organizing a crew reunion, to be held on Homecoming Weekend, Labor Day. We talked about it, and thought it would be fun, and the boys would like the beach. So began a tradition. We have spent nearly every Labor Day there since.

Alex and Nick were so little when we first went. We stayed in Rowland Hall, ate at the Quillen, and mostly talked about the ways our lives had followed sometimes parallel paths, though seldom intersecting. The boys met Owen and Heather, Jack and Reed, others. The Labor Day weekends that followed charted growing up.

Our last time there together was 2007. Alex drove up and joined us on Saturday, I went up to Bowdoin to get NIck Friday night. I nearly fell asleep at the wheel on my way up, just outside Freeport. Very scary. I asked Nick to drive back to Camp Ellis. He was a good, competent driver. I woke up as we were getting off at the Old Orchard Beach exit.

It was like old times, being children on the beach again. For the sand castle competition, they sheepishly built an inverted "negative space" castle (a conical hole). This is Alex putting finishing touches on the "castle," and Nicholas "helping" by leaping into the hole (photo by Chuck S.):

This being Ferry Beach, they got a prize - ice cream certificates for the store.

Christmas 2000 - Nocedal

We spent Christmas 2000 in Santiago, then went south to Futrono for a few days. This is the patio in our house on Nocedal, in La Reina, Christmas Day. Peter, Alex, Sofia, Nicholas, Damian, Siri, and of course my dad. Nick and Alex liked having Christmas in the summer, as well as visiting my dad, Mina and Jorge, and Peter, Chabuca and the cousins.

Nick and I made one more trip to Chile to see my father after this, in 2003. My dad died suddenly at home in Santiago in June 2004, the morning after Alex graduated from high school, so we went to Santiago then, and because we knew we would be selling the house and didn't know when we would be able to come back, came back for another visit in late July.

Found a stone

The Rodeo's are selling their house. They have been angels - Marta was there with Nick and the boys before the Fire Department arrived, and has been kind to us ever since. The tree Nick hit is there - one of the ironies of this whole thing is that to look at the tree you would never have known its tragic moment.

Mrs. Monti will do a stone marker - it was her idea that we find a stone. Tess and I found one over two years ago, just off a path in the woods. It's taken me two years to get the stone down off the hill. Now I need to drive it to Quincy.
I think it will just say:

Nicholas
+22 Nov 2007

It's a field stone, and it will go down flat. I want to get it set in place before they sell the house.

Estabrook

We walked the dogs across the school yard yesterday, heading for the conservation land on the other side. Abby puffing up the hill, Tess running back and forth, trying to get me to throw her tennis ball. It was a beautiful evening - tall thunderclouds with their tops lit by the setting sun, a bit humid still, but cooler than after the thunderstorms earlier in the day.

Estabrook is like a path of memories. Mrs. Hopkins' kindergarten classroom on the corner, the one Nicholas used to be terrified to go into. We used to go in the side door, and get as far as the coat rack, then Nick's courage would give out and we would sit on the boot bench outside the classroom. Sometimes as we got close to class time, Mrs. Hopkins would look out and say hello to Nick, cheerfully (or terrifyingly, I suppose). Other times we would work our way into the room, maybe get as far as the reading circle or the play house.

From a long perspective, I know now that Nick was completely used to having Alex with him. Alex, it seemed (to him), always knew what to do, was never frightened, was bigger, would always protect Nick. Going places with Alex was not scary. Nick worried - nameless terrors that seemed to have started at Eliot-Pearson, with the equally sweet (and inexplicably terrifying) Carol Henrichs. Maybe it wasn't so much that school was scary, but I guess the idea of spending the day there, by oneself, was a bit much.

There were so many happy days. Bringing Abby to school for show and tell when she was about 9 weeks old (?), charting "a puppy's progress" for science fair, helping to build the play structure and later the outdoor amphitheater (with Len Morse-Fortier), Ms. Donahue (who also had Alex), art classes with Mrs. Shurtleff, Nick's introduction to music - recorder, then 'cello (bass would come later, at Diamond), Mr. Horton (Nick never did get himself sent to his office), Mr. Banks' gym classes. The wild fringe of the playground, home to many warrior camps, forts, and so on, and the playing fields - Nick's flirtation with soccer, mostly - baseball was mostly at Fiske and in town. Bad days too - breaking his foot running across the breezeway in Cub Scouts, roofing important balls and rockets. But on the whole, in my memory of it, Estabrook for NIck was love.

to be continued...

What are we doing here?

I thought a long time about posting this photograph.
Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is this all about?
I don't have the answers. I don't know why we go from fullness of life to non response - I know how this can happen but not how it could happen.
In a sense, this post is about being afraid that memory will fade. That Nicholas will fade.
This photograph puts me there. I can look at it and not fall apart now, but I can't look at it and not feel that moment. As tough it was yesterday.

Squam Rock

The Fourth of July came and went. Nick's last (and only) load of fireworks from Seabrook is still sitting above the cabinets in the kitchen. We let half of them off in the Estabrook parking lot in 2006. Andrew was pestering his parents to let him buy some, and I thought of Nick.

For many years, the Fourth of July was defined by Erma's. There's a photo of us in her garden, Nick, Alex, Elizabeth and me, taken by Esther. Nick is about eight. The holiday followed a familiar pattern, one I had known since my own freshman year in college. A family gathering at Erma's, me as the adoptive cousin, Elizabeth and the boys adopted too. Seeing the family - Erma, Phil, Marcie, Mike and Candace, many more. Usually some neighbor's dog in the middle, and the cats - Pinklepurr, maybe Dandy, who knows. The beach, of course, and on the way to the beach, the climb to the top of the hill, through the trees, and then the bare top and Squam Rock.

Squam was always a challenge. There is really only one easy way up, as I discovered sometime in 1974. And getting up is the easier part. I don't remember how old Alex was when he first climbed it, only that Nicholas had to climb it too. Right away. I think he climbed it pushing off my hands, the first time, to get up over the first part. Then it gets easier as you get to the top. From the top there's the view - not quite this one, but close - the little channels of melt water, the mysterious nubs of iron where someone, probably a hundred years ago, built some sort of ladder or railing, now gone, probably for gentleman adventurers to climb up. And the vertical sides, it seems on three sides. The descent is harder - the choice between an undignified crab walk / slide on the seat of your pants, or the what-the-heck run.

Then there was the year that Nick climbed it on his own - no helping hands, no seat of the pants, just a wild scramble up and a wilder one down. I think he ran all the way back to Erma's to tell us. They weren't supposed to be climbing it without one of us there, of course. We (or at least he) climbed it every visit - probably for the last time in the summer of 2004, after Dad died. Erma was like a great aunt to Nick and Alex, died in April 2005. What a wonderful person.

Summertime

Summer came again. Nick loved it. The end of the school year, the not having to get up, the being able to stay up as late as you want, reading, watching movies, playing video games, sleeping in the next day. Camp, summer school, summer jobs - gardening at LHS, working the loading dock with Frank at Sears, fast food, two Russian ladies teaching summer Russian at Harvard, chain smoking during the breaks - a new language in 8 weeks! Summer orchestra at Harvard. Rancatore's. Baseball with Mr. McKenna. Biking. Falling off bikes. Hiking. Sailing at Courageous. Fishing (sort of). Sara. England.

Nicholas and the Standard Inscription

Nicholas was 15 when he discovered the Assyrian tablets. We were visiting the British Museum, and he and Alex were looking for the Rosetta Stone. On the way they passed several stone bas reliefs, including this one.

Carved across the reliefs is a cuneiform inscription - like graffiti, except this was done meticulously as part of the carving of the tablets. Cuneiform must have been hard to carve - the things that made it easy to incise into clay tablets probably did not work as well in stone.

Below the panels was a translation of the writing, which is what is known as the Standard Inscription:

The palace of Ashurnasirpal, chief priest of Ashur, the chosen one of Enlil and Ninurta, the favorite of Anu and Dagan, the divine weapon of the Great Gods, the potent king, the king of the world, the king of Assyria; the son of Tukulti-Ninurta, the great king, the potent king, the king of the world, the king of Assyria; the son of Adad-nirari, the king of the world, the king of Assyria;

the powerful warrior who always lived by Ashur, his lord; who has no rival among the princes of the four quarters of the earth;

the shepherd of his people, fearless in battle, the overpowering tidewater who has no opponent;

the king, subjugator of the unsubmissive, who rules the total sum of all humanity;

the potent warrior, who tramples his enemies, who crushes all the adversaries;

the disperser of the host of the haughty;

the king who always lived by trust in the Great Gods, his lords; and captured all the lands himself, ruled all their mountainous districts, received their tribute; who takes hostages, who establishes victory over all their lands.

When Ashur, who selected me, who made my kingship great, entrusted his merciless weapon into my lordly arms, I verily struck down the widespread troops of Lullumu with weapons, during the battle encounter. As for the troops of the lands of Nairi, Habhu, Shubaru, and Nirbu, I roared over them like Adad the destroyer, with the aid of Shamash and Adad, my helper gods. the king who caused from the other bank of the Tigris to the Lebanon and the Great Sea, the whole of Laqu, and Suhu as far as Rapiqu, to submit; himself conquered from the source of the Subnat River to Urartu; annexed as my own territory from the pass of Kirruru to Gilzanu, from the other bank of the Lower Zab to Til Bari which is upstream from Zaban, from Til sha Abtani to Til sha Zabdani. I counted as my own people from the pass of Babite to Hashmar. I set my residents in the lands over which I ruled obeisance and [forced labor].

Ashurnasirpal, the obedient prince, the worshiper of the Great Gods, the fierce dragon, the conqueror of all cities and mountains to their full extent, the king of rulers, who tames the dangerous enemies, crowned with glory, unafraid of battle, the relentless lion, who shakes resistance, praise the king, the shepherd, protection of the world, the king whose command blots out mountains and seas, who forced into compliance the relentless, fierce kings from the east to the west at his very approach.

Nick read most of this aloud, especially the part about Adad the Destroyer. There was something about the idea of this inscription covering all of the reliefs in Nimrud that really appealed to him. Strangely, the Assyrian reliefs seemed to follow us around - we found them at the Worcester Art Museum, which we visited with Nicholas when Alex was a freshman at WPI, and at the Museum of Fine Arts. When he arrived at Bowdoin, Nick discovered that the art museum there also has two fragments of panels. Many museums don't focus on the text of the inscription, so it was a delight to Nick that he knew the secret message chiseled across the figures.

Happy Birthday, Nicholas.

Happy Birthday, Nicholas.
Nick would have been 21 on Friday, May 7, 2010.
It will be 898 days since his death.
Nicholas was a perfect baby. He was early - always - but in this case it made him seem tiny compared to Alex. He curled up in our arms like a little mouse - tiny fingers, tiny toes, and it seemed little nubs on his shoulders where the wings must have been attached. An angel. Not quite here, not quite ours.

Time to share

I started this blog with the idea of sharing it at some point, but have never done so, and as you can see the posts are infrequent. It's too easy to think about the here and now, or if I talk about our life, pre 112207, to get bogged down in comparisons - the then and now. Nick's birthday is coming up, and that gave me the idea of trying to do a sort of cycle through the year - the now always brings back the then anyway.

Three years ago we put the photo below in Nick's high school yearbook. It was a sort of compromise. We wanted to buy an ad, Nick didn't want anything that would embarrass him, so this is what we did. No name.

The text is Rudyard Kipling's "If." Nick liked Kipling, at least as much as he had read of him. The Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book was his favorite movie for a very long time, and we read Kim as a chapter book when he was little. He knew some of Kipling's verse, including this poem, but "If" was our pick for him, rather than his own. Nick was on the way.

Science Olympiad

Another year. Three years ago, it was Nick, Frank and a handful of others bucking the LHS system, deciding to compete in the State Science Olympiad, and placing fourth. The science department told them they had no chance, they would embarrass the school. We told Nick he had more important things to do his senior year. Nick went ahead, somehow got it all done - college applications, interviews, homework, APs, and Science Olympiad. They went to none of the regional practice meets, but recruited kids, practiced the academics, worked on the engineering events until all hours as the date neared. Fourth.

I had no idea what that meant.

The team was resurrected in 2008 by Olga Guttag, almost single-handedly. In early December they came to us and asked if they could name the team in Nick's memory, and we said of course. Olga was able to get some money from Shire to help cover expenses - still no school support. That first year they placed fourth. Last year I helped coach (really didn't do much - I was in South Africa most of January) - we placed second, and nearly unseated Newton North.

This year we worked hard at it. I think I spent every Saturday after New Year on engineering events. Olga was hospitalized the day of the meet, Elizabeth and I had been at BI until midnight the night before, getting Elizabeth's finger stitched up (the cookies were great!), and I got the call while we were at the hospital asking if I would run the meet for the team. Nick was with us, I think. Big disappointment at the awards - we placed six, in spite of the usual good showing on some events. Good news the next day - scoring error, we really placed third!

A new year

Another year.

It snowed much of the New Year's weekend. Alex worked a 24-hour shift on New Year's day, then a 12-hour shift on the following day, followed by another 24-hour shift on Sunday into Monday. Mount Auburn was closed Sunday when we went, so I went Monday morning. Bright sunshine, made brighter by the snow. Nick is still there, and of course not there.

Sara came for dinner tonight. It was great to see her, and good to have the time together. Her brother Daniel has grown a lot, and she talked about how he is "huggable" now, and how if he keeps growing ... We talked about shoe sizes - Alex pointed out his feet are size 13. Elizabeth said he got his hands from me and his feet from her, and we measured his hands against mine, then mine against Sara's - we agreed Nick's hands were bigger than mine, how he could fold the tops of his fingers down over her fingertips. It's like a knife sometimes.

Dianne Arakawa preached on the first chapter of John yesterday - In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. She talked about how John begins at the beginning, how the point is that we are with God, and of God, before we are. I think it's a way of connecting with the unknowable - we don't know where we come from, we don't know where we're going to. We find out, in the end.