Remembering my father

I spent Thanksgiving with my sister and her beautiful family.   My sister mentioned that, Caitlin, her granddaughter, recently asked why she never talked about our father, George Brady.
In the moment, we shared a few stories about this neat, quick, handsome and steady soul we called Dad.  He adored our mother and made no secret of it.  We talked a little about how he was hard to talk to about our worries.   He was famous for responding to any whining with, "Keep it up and I'll give you something to cry about."
Does that sound cruel?
But the thing about my Dad was that though he loved poetry and would recite his favorite, "The Rabbi Ben Ezra," by Robert Browning, at the drop of a hat, he really wasn't a man of words.
He expressed himself in a thousand other ways.  He was a great dancer and athlete.  He won a roller skating award as a young man.  Into his 60s, he could still do a handstand and back flip.
He was 40 when I was born, but one of my favorite memories is holding hands and skipping with him all the way to the "French Church" in Everett on a snowy morning when I nine or ten.  I estimate it at about a half mile away from our house.  I can still feel the joy and amazement of us leaping through the crisp air with whiteness all around and the diamond brilliance of ice on the trees flooding all my senses.  Heart pounding, lungs screaming and an animal spirit that  experienced boundless, wordless joy in the motion of our flight; I don't think I ever loved or connected with my Dad more than I did that morning.
https://www.churchfinder.com/churches/ma/everett/st-joseph-parish#church-profile-map-it
I learned to be with someone and simply enjoy being alive together without words.
Dad put us to bed almost every night when we were little.  My older brother and sister had their own rooms, but my brothers and I shared a room until I was five or six.  Paul still slept in a crib.  My dad would lie down with us and tell us stories until we dropped off to sleep.
I associate my Dad with the faint smell of sweat and a hint of cigarettes.  Honest smells.  I know he had Old Spice in the bathroom, but I never knew him to splash it on or to use deodorant back in the 50s.  This may come as a shock, but most people (especially men) didn't start using deodorants until the late 50s.  It took Madison Avenue to make us aware of how "bad" we all smelled.
When I was in high school, Dad would often get up at 3 or 4 AM on a Saturday morning to take me, my brothers and their friends to play hockey in Charlestown.  I was included even though I hung around the end of the rink annoying them by doing tricks in my figure skates more often than I tried to play hockey. 
He taught us all how to swim and ice skate.
I never went riding with him until he was in his 70s, but he rode when he was young and had a cool pair of tweed jodhpurs that I appropriated when I was in my teens. 
He grew up poor and that seemed to make him very self-sufficient and resourceful.  My Dad once made chowder out of the eel my brother caught when he took us all fishing off a bridge in Lynn.  He made crab apple jelly from the tree in our yard.  He could fix anything (at least it seemed to me) from stitching shoes back together to ironing clothes.
There was a somewhat sad side to the poverty he knew as a child.  Every year at Christmas when we kids would start agitating about getting our Christmas tree, my father would exclaim, "No Christmas tree this year.  It's ridiculous and a waste of money.  It makes a huge mess."   My mom would just smile which made us all think he was kidding and we laughed it off.
Our Christmas tree didn't go up until a week before Christmas.  We could decorate the rest of the house, but the tree came late.  My Dad dutifully sawed off the end of the tree and sunk it in a metal bucket filled with rocks and water.
In my memory, our Christmas trees were always glorious and mesmerizing with those bubbling candles and lighted angel high atop. 
Actually, as I found out later, my Dad really didn't ever have a Christmas tree when he was a kid and considered it a frivolous waste of money.
Dad was a Certified Public Accountant for the federal government and a graduate of Bentley College.  He went to school while he worked in the office at Touraine Paints, Inc. in Everett, MA.
https://www.corporationwiki.com/Massachusetts/Everett/touraine-paints-inc-2988707.aspxhttps://www.corporationwiki.com/Massachusetts/Everett/touraine-paints-inc-2988707.aspx
My Mom would often recount how impressed she was with his ambition and energy when she met him.  She'd tell us how he would hop on the streetcar to go to his classes at Bentley and then back on the streetcar to take him to the "Spanish Gables" in Revere to dance the rest of the night away.
http://www.reverebeach.com/history/
Mom and Dad met through her brother, William Finnegan, who was friends with my Dad.  
When I was growing up, he was out the door each morning by 7 AM and walked over a mile to Everett Station to take the train into Boston.  He was home every night by 6 PM  and pitching in to get dinner on the table.
I wanted to get a few memories down and shared with Caitlin, Michelle and all the other grandchildren who never met or got to know George Brady and might wonder who he was.  There's much more to tell, but I hope this gives you some idea of the man who embodied both a wildness and a discipline that made him unique and delightful beyond words to describe.
Next time, I'll tell you about the shoes.
 

Autumn reflections and Mothers Out Front

My daily walk takes me past tumbling streams, ponds, cows, horses, wetlands and woods.  There's this one spot where the water rushes from a dam behind a screen of trees with leaves of deep pink and yellow.  Sun or cloud, that spot always seems to have its own light.
I never tire of this path.  It feeds my senses and reminds me why staying alive matters so much.
I'm not contemplating suicide if that last sentence sounds ominous.  No.  I'm seriously worried that the human race is going to either blow itself up or die a slow and ugly death as a result of runaway climate change.
Of course, having such dark thoughts concerns me.  What separates me from the people who simply continue going about their daily routines?   If I were young and still employed would I even notice the issues that seem to consume my every thought?  Have I become a "dotard?"  Am I the liberal version of a typical FOX News viewer? 
I don't think so.  I think there really is a reason to be concerned and that this worry is cross-generational.  For me, the evidence lies in organizations like Mothers Out Front.  I've been to their marches and rallies in West Roxbury and was very impressed with their unapologetic demand that politicians act to save the future for their children. 
I was delighted that MOF opened a NH Chapter and immediately joined.  
Next Tuesday, Nov 14th, Mothers Out Front's, Emily Manns, is on a panel about creating "Green" hubs to support innovation.   It's at the Center for History and Culture in Peterborough at 7 PM.
I'm really looking forward to it.
That's it.