“Miss Lucy?” I ask Jackson, who immediately positions himself facing me, claps his hands together, as we intone the first word, drawing it out, “Miss. . . . .”, until we’re ready for the first right-hand-to-right-hand clap. It’s one of the simplest patty-cake games there is – right-to-right, left-to-left, both-to-both, and I’m amazed at how effortlessly the absurd lyrics come back to me as I chant:

Miss Lucy had a steamboat,

The steamboat had a bell.

Miss Lucy went to heaven,

And the steamboat went to –

Hello operator,

Give me number nine.

And if you disconnect me,

I will kick you in the –

Behind the refrigerator,

There was a piece of glass.

Miss Lucy sat upon it,

And she broke her little –

Ask me no more questions,

Tell me no more lies.

The boys are in the bathroom,

Pulling down their –

Flies are in the meadow,

The bees are in the park.

The boys and girls are kissing in the —

D-A-R-K, D-A-R-K, D-A-R-K, dark, dark, dark.

This activity is something beyond recall or memorization. It is a chant so ingrained in my consciousness that it nearly feels involuntary, like breathing, or pumping blood through my veins. The words, or the narrative they form, telling of childhood naughtiness and “bad words” almost spoken still give me a giggle, and Diego is now old enough to get the double entendres.

Jackson, on the other hand, is still at the age when the fun is in the clapping with Daddy. Pretty soon he’ll get that glint in his eyes when he thinks, “Hey, wait a minute. I think I know what this thing is about.”

For me it’s yet another bit of time travel, back to long summer days filled with activity, including sitting with my younger brother, clapping hands, faster and faster, telling the silly story of Miss Lucy and laughing until we gave ourselves the hiccups.

There was a couple speaking on the morning news today about their fifteen-year-old son who was bullied to the point of suicide. It’s a terrifying thought, and I fear for my own children in their lives away from me. I’m not naive; I know I cannot protect them from all the pain and suffering that will befall them in the course of their lives. I can only try my best to watch for the signs of anguish my boys may or may not wear on their faces, or suggest with their body language, in the event they are being mistreated. They have to be convinced in their own hearts that they are worthy of respect and that no one has the right to abuse them in any way.

I’m less concerned about Jackson. Something tells me his out-sized personality and athletic ability will keep the wolves away from his door. If anything, his fascination with professional wrestling gives me cause for concern, and I worry he will try to put his hands on other kids, in the name of “fun.”

Diego is such a kind, gentle soul and my fear is that his is the type of personality that other children target. He’s already been the victim of an alleged bullying incident, in which he was coerced to do something that put him at the brunt of a cruel, if ridiculous, joke. J. and I took the opportunity to treat it as a “teachable moment,” and my hope is that he will not allow himself to be a “victim,” in any form, ever again.

If, however, some other child or children decide to attack him, I want him always to be able to come to me and tell me, so that his feelings don’t bottle up and tear at his soul, the way they obviously do for so many children who make the ultimate decision to escape. This must never happen, because if it did, I can’t imagine a scenario in which I’d be able to recover from it.

Someday one or both of my sons may keep a journal, like the one I write in every morning, capturing their thoughts and memories. I’d be surprised if pen and paper have anything to do with it.

If not, they’ll at least have conversations with each other, the way Mike and I do.

47-Year-Old Diego: Hey, do you remember how Dad used to take us to play tennis at Manor High School when we were little?

45-Year-Old Jackson: Yeah and we had to run after the balls we hit over the fence.

D: Remember how Mom used to blast the music?

J: And we’d all dance like crazy. What songs did we dance to?

D: “Whip my Hair” by Willow Smith.

J: “Live Your Life”

D: Jay Z. That New York song.

J: Who sang “Live Your Life?”

D: Rihanna.

J: Remember that time Dad took us to run Ally on the golf course?

D: Oh man, it was so hot that day. Poor Ally.

J: Ally? Poor us!

D: Ally. Our first dog. What a great dog.

J: The best. Remember how much she loved Mom?

D: Mom used to stand her up and dance salsa with her, remember that?

J: Man, I’ll never forget that. I think Dad was jealous that Ally loved Mom so much.

D: Why do you say that?

J: I think Dad wanted to be the Alpha Dog.

Hotel living is a double-edged sword. In a way, it’s wonderful and provides a monthly respite from the non-stop action of my life. There are no little boys or dogs trailing so closely after me that I trip over them if I’m not careful. Once you become a family man (or woman) you give up any claim to privacy, to time alone, to being a “solitary” individual — if you’re worth anything as a parent, that is.

So that’s the good part — the quiet that is so rare, so hard to come by in my present life. It’s the piece I have to remind myself to enjoy and embrace, especially when that other edge of the sword starts tickling my neck.

I’m referring to the loneliness that creeps so readily in when I’m staying in a hotel room. It probably doesn’t help that I stay in rooms that are essentially identical to one another, adding a surreal dimension to the experience. I remember when David Keith’s character in An Officer and a Gentleman killed himself. In a hotel room.

Okay, Dan, chill out. Get some sleep. You’ll be home tomorrow.



Daniel and Michael Fuchs, July, 1968, Greenburgh, New York



I don’t often think about 9/11. It’s not that I’ve blocked it out, or anything as dramatic as that. It’s been nearly ten years, and in the spirit of survival and not giving in, I have moved on. It’s my strong belief that the collective souls of those thousands of innocents whose lives were so recklessly taken on that day would not wish us to dwell on the devastation, but, rather they’d want us to forge ahead and continue on, and in the process, we avenge their deaths by living our lives.

Occasionally, however, I do remember. I remember the way my student, Sean Lawrence, came into my classroom on the third floor of Satellite Academy on West 30th Street and said in a curious monotone, “I’m not sure, but I think I just saw a plane crash into the World Trade Center.” He had caught a glimpse of that first impact, just as he was crossing Sixth Avenue, heading to school.

I recall the silence of a New York City with no cars driving past, and no planes flying overhead. It was eerie, and we, the inhabitants making our way to our homes that day, walked past each other like shadows, strangely making eye contact (not our usual way), as if to wordlessly reassure one another.

I remember the way we all shifted to the north-facing windows of the F-train, as we emerged in Brooklyn, and seeing, for the first time, the giant plume of smoke that would linger and stink for days. A teenage boy saying, “Oh my God, it’s true. It’s really true.”

Weeks later, as we healed, I was in a bar with some friends, who introduced me to a woman I’d never met. “I was there,” she said. I didn’t have to ask her where. Or when. I just knew by the look in her eyes.

“There’s one thing I’ll never forget,” she said. “The shoes.”

“Shoes?”

“They just kept falling. Shoes. Women’s shoes, men’s boots, children’s sneakers. They were raining down from the burning building.”

She told me she’d heard from a scientist friend that the physics behind the falling shoes was similar to when a pedestrian is hit by a speeding car and one sees a pair of shoes standing in the exact spot where the victim once stood. Imagine that impact, times a hundred. Times a thousand.

The woman passed this image on to me, and although I’m thankful for not having been there that day, it’s this second-hand image that occasionally wakes me up at night, as I consider what it must have been like to have been in those shoes on that sunny fall morning nearly ten years ago. There are other, more violent images I’ve seen associated with 9/11; the footage of people choosing to jump from 100 stories, rather than be burned to death, a photograph taken by my brother-in-law, one of the first responders, of something that had once been a human being — but it’s these falling shoes that I’ll never forget and that will forever remind me of horrific tragedy and a loss that changed our world forever.