O Danny Boy

                                   O Danny Boy

Okay! OKAY,   I’m pushing,     leave me ALONE!     I’m busy,    I’m pushing       ooooooooh!        HERE WE GO AGAIN!

It’s a boy!

Hot, wet, someone lays him on my stomach just within reach of my fingertips -- my son, my sweet baby boy.

“I told you, I knew all along.”

Grinning, exhausted, I’m remembering that long ride to the Delivery Room on the stretcher. The nurse, noticing my pink slippers commenting, “You’re looking for a girl.’

“No, it’s a boy, I know!” I’d been making him, nurturing him, trying to get comfortable with him for nine whole months, don’t you think I would know?”

Flat on my back, feet still up in the stirrups, laughing and weeping all at once, beside myself with joy. The doctor turns to the nurse, “She’s awake! Call downstairs to the waiting room. Let her talk to her husband.” They’re not used to wide awake, natural-childbirth mothers.

Phone up to my ear, Ray’s worried ”Yes -- ?”

“Oh, Danny Boy…the pipes, the pipes are calling….”

Later, downstairs in my room, washed, in a warm clean hospital gown,  tucked up in bed I relaxed after all that hard work, but also HUNGRY! Kitchen closed, it’s after 10:00, poor Ray goes out and gets me the most unforgettable, delicious coffee milk shake ever made!

September 21, 1962. Passaic General Hospital, Passaic New Jersey where my first two children were born. Actually, I was born there too!

It is fifty-five years later and my tiny Danny Boy is a man. Like everyone his life has had excitement, sorrow, disappointments, dreams found and lost, a divorce, a precious daughter, success and failure --

But I write about him as he is NOW, today, living in the moment, because that is exactly what he is doing -- and doing it so well. He is walking, hiking the Appalachian Trail, 10, 12, even 17 miles a day. 280 miles in just 27 days, over rough, rocky ground, up thousands of feet to one mountain-top after another, slipping, sliding down again clutching his hiking poles for dear life in rain, even snow in Georgia in April!

When he takes a ‘zero day’ in one of the small towns close on the Trail to rest and stock up on food he calls me and we talk for an hour. His voice is so strong, excited. 

Today, he is recounting a horrendous trek over the last of the Smokey Mountains a day ago. There were hurricane force winds, snow pellets scoring his face, unsure footing. Almost desparate when his trail buddy grabbed his shoulder, shouting against the roar of the wind, “Man, we are fuckin’ ALIVE!”

“Church -- hell,” Dan tells me, “God lives in the mountain storms!”

Totally alive in that moment, that freezing, bitter, painful, moment -- every part of him stretched almost beyond measure -- gloriously aware of what being alive is all about!

He talks, too, of the quieter moments. “Mom, when I get to the shelter at the end of a day it’s good to meet up with other hikers, some I’ve met before, others are new, it changes a lot, but what I really like best is the walking alone --  mile after mile, my head’s down watching where to make the next careful step. I have stuff to eat tucked in every pocket so I don’t have to stop. I probably eat every hour that way. Sometimes I do stop when there’s an awesome view across the mountains. You know, mom, it is really like meditating. My mind is empty, happy just to be, I’m not regretting the past, I’m not thinking about the future, worrying, planning  -- I’m just resting, aware of the moment. It feels good. Maybe when I get back I’ll write a book, ‘The Appalachian Trail, Modern Man’s Path to Enlightment’ .”

Did I forget to mention that within the last five years Dan (‘boy’ no longer) has had two heart attacks, four stents in that rather important organ? If I did it’s because he does not identify himself that way. He has not talked to me about the journey from the way-things-were-to-now those rather abrupt occasions caused. I have watched him from mother-distance deal with and accept reality. Deciding to stop living a put-off existence he recently resigned from the job he had held for 27 years, gave up his treasured apartment, put just a few things in a 5 X 5 storage unit, came east from Seattle and in one happy moment decided to put – forgive that hackneyed phrase – mind, body and spirit smack-dab in a total experience on the Appalachian Trail

He is learning, that the only time any of us are alive is this moment, the past is mind-memory, tomorrow does not exist yet. Most of us live in a series of empty, tomorrow will be great, I’ll do something then, wasn’t that fun yesterday, where should we go on vacation next year  and the oh so potential gift of actually doing, experiencing now slides, unnoticed by.

Challenged every day, tricky right ankle, blister at the base of his thumb from clutching those poles, favoring his left knee, face forward, munching on a candy bar -- totally alive, Dan, my Danny Boy, lives in each moment forever.

“ -- from glen to glen and down the mountain side ……”