Susan walked up behind me as I finished my bowl of Honey Grahams. It was 7:30 a.m.
and it was time for a sweet hug from my wife, Susan, who was back from her standard three mile
run. I could feel her heart racing but, as usual, she was bone dry. For years, I had wondered how
she never sweated because three miles always had me dripping.
“Hey, that was a great walk last night…good ears, my man.”
I looked up at her and gazed into her eyes.
“I know, Tom has grown up so, so fast…but you can still talk to him…Tom's a lot like
you are…teens need to feel heard, like their emotions and ideas count for something.”
“That's good stuff…I'll see if I can take him out to dinner after practice.”
Susan and I had been walking every night since late April - our conversations were
helping us deal with things of the day. Patient illnesses…her problems with her brother Stanley…
our son Tom - anything was fair game to discuss during these walks. We tried to push it for two
miles.
There's an old saying, “If Momma ain't happy, ain't no one happy”, and Susan hadn't
been happy lately with Tom's silence. A sixteen year old young man does not need his parents
much, so this had been sending Susan into a funk. This was the topic during our walk that last
night. Really, Tom had been that way since puberty a few years back, except it never seemed to
bother Susan much, or, if it did, she didn't talk about it. Lately, however, she had wanted to
discuss her feelings.
Washing my cereal bowl in the sink, I found a place for it in the dishwasher. Susan
handed me a banana for a mid morning snack. I started to look for my work shoes, only to find
our seven-year old black lab, Zeke, lying on them. I gave him a nudge with my foot causing him
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to whine as he got up because Zeke always spent most of the day outside, and he adored his time
inside our home.
“Nick, don't forget to nail down a time with Will McRae. Tell him the tile people will
finish on Friday and we would like him to put the glass in soon after that.”
We were re-doing our whole master bathroom and the shower was the last thing to finish.
Every couple, before they marry, should complete a re-modeling project - I could think of two
couples that had nearly divorced over such a task in recent years.
Even though Susan had all the time in the world to make that phone call to Will McRae,
she could not stand dealing with anybody servicing our home. Susan had me make all the cable
appointments, call the plumber when needed and work with all contractors directly. Susan
claimed that I was so particular in the way I wanted things done, that I had become a poor
delegator. Much as I would have loved, I avoided discussion of this issue on our nightly walks.
We lived in a white colonial at 57 Skyline Drive in Morristown, NJ. The house was built
in 1931 and we were the third owners. Susan and I were pretty sure when we moved in 12 years
ago that the only update that had been done over the years was the upstairs carpet, and we were
afraid to fire up the ancient stove that stood in the middle of the kitchen, so we chose to gut the
entire kitchen. In hindsight, I thought we should have done that before moving in. It was a really
long six weeks of eating takeout on the floor of our dining room, particularly since Tommy was
only five at the time.
“Well, I'll make sure Will has talked with the glass people. It had to be custom ordered
and I don't know if they have received it from the manufacturer,” I replied to Susan.
“That's my honey…now run off and save somebody from some nasty disease.”
Susan leaned in with a kiss.
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“What time did Tom get home last night? Don't forget to get his butt out of bed by 9:30. I
want him running two miles before practice this afternoon,” I instructed my wife.
Tom's friends on his team had been calling him lard ass, because the goalie didn't have
to run as hard as the other players. I learned this from his best friend Charlie this past Spring. I didn't think Tom looked particularly heavy, but Susan and I agreed to set him up with a jogging
schedule this summer.
“Don't worry, if he gives me any grief, I'll have him call you. I think he got in around
11pm…he was just at Charlie's.”
Susan was a light sleeper and even though we were both sound asleep at 11pm the prior
evening, I was confident in her ability to awaken to Charlie's arrival at our house.
I grabbed my keys and opened the garage door.
“Hey, Susan? Are we on for lunch?”
We tried our best to grab lunch together at least three times a week.
“No…remember? I gotta take Stanley to Christopher Larsky at 11:30 and who knows
how long that'll take.”
Christopher Larsky was Stanley's podiatrist.
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9:30am
“Stan, I have to cancel dinner Friday night?” Susan Johnson cautiously informed her
brother over the phone.
She always called him Stan, but he was Stanley to everybody else. Stan was blind.
“You sure?” Stan asked with a slight quiver. He dined at Luiggi's nearly every Friday
night and Susan joined him on occasion, though it had been close to two months since she last
joined him.
“Hey, you know I love going to Luiggi's with you, but I'm gonna be at a soccer
fundraiser until maybe eight.”
Stanley Walton was four years older than Susan, born in 1951. They grew up in Basking
Ridge, NJ, a little more than an hour outside of Manhattan.
Stan began to chuckle. “That's my gal…what in the world would I do without you,
Susan?”
The truth was Susan wasn't sure what she would do without her brother since her son,
Tom, was in the blooming wonder of teenage hood and its entire splendor of independence and
contempt for all that was family. Her mother, Jean, was no longer physically able to care for Stan,
so a lot was resting on Susan's shoulders. She loved every minute of it.
*****
Stan wasn't born blind. He graduated from high school in 1969 and enrolled at HamiltonCollege in upstate New York. The Vietnam War draft was in full roar during this time, forcing
Stan and all his classmates to draw draft lottery numbers. The numbers ran from 1 to 365 -
anybody with a number lower than 170 faced a real good chance of being drafted into the
Vietnam War. It was only a matter of time for these numbers. After drawing the number 138,
Stan was drafted in April 1971.
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Fighting in the Vietnam jungle was horribly confusing at times, and, while Stan was in
the forward most group, closest to the surging Vietcong troops, he saw a grenade fly over his
head from behind him, strike a tree, and explode fifteen feet above his position.
With his head badly burned, Stan could only see out of his right eye and even that eye
was quite blurry. When a U.S. medic found him early the next morning, he thought Stan was dead
until he found a faint pulse on his neck.
Stan was honorably discharged to a VA hospital in New Jersey. Over the following few
weeks, Stan grew increasingly blind due to the injuries to his head.
After about a week at the VA, Stan started to see spiritual images which sent him into a
trance-like state. He was conscious during this series of visual episodes with the heavens, where a
man wearing an all white suit and shoes, sporting short cropped, fire red hair and goatee,
approached Stan.
This famous saint opened his mouth and out came a pitch that would collapse Fort Knox.
He pointed to a moving light that looked more like a spotlight given the near complete darkness
in the area. When the light came to where they were standing, Stan found himself at the foot of a
throne with a baby seated in the middle. A sea of Angels and Saints surrounded the throne,
singing heavenly songs and angelic worship to the throne from which the baby kept smiling
gently at Stan but didn't make any noise.
*****
“So, I'll pop by around 10:45 to help you out and maybe we can find your sandals,”Susan offered. “Did you sleep okay last night?”
“Oh yeah just fine, my foot doesn't bother me when I lie down, only when I'm on my
feet for awhile.”
The appointment that morning was for Stan's podiatrist.
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“How's your laundry situation?“ Susan inquired. She had not done any of his laundry in
five days and didn't know what to make of this because this was one area she didn't feel
comfortable pressing Stan.
“Oh, I'm okay. I guess…but I'll get some ready for you this morning if that's alright.”
“Okay, darling, so I'll see you a little before 11:00.”
“That's fine…adios.”
Stan hung up the phone.
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