Florence opened the door and invited me into her apartment. She pushed her walker to her chair by the window. Her knitting bag sat next to the chair and a knitted and faded afghan was draped over the back.  I spun her walker around and sat on the cushioned seat, facing her.

The red flag ascends as soon as the caller says “I’m __________, and I’m calling for mom/dad.”

We waited at the curb with our big packs at our feet, cars backed up in front of us, dropping off passengers, picking some up. It took a while for my buddy’s wife to make her way through it but she made it. We threw our packs in the trunk and jumped in the car.

Looking for my birth certificate, I dug a  dusty box out of the closet, and started to go through it. I failed to find my birth certificate, but I found a birthday card that my mom wrote to me, probably when I was at Notre Dame. “I am proud of the man that you have become,” she wrote to me.

A baseball player who makes it past Little League may get the honor of choosing a walk-up song. This is the tune that gets played over the public address system as the player strides to the plate to hit. Some players choose their favorite song, or one that pumps them up. Some make it a joke.