My mother, Linda Kelman, died last Tuesday of cancer. She was 64. It is hard to tell someone at the water cooler, or when you’re about to hang up the phone, that, actually, your mom died, mostly because it seems like such an injustice to her.  So here is a memorial to Mom.

Growing up, my twin brother and I were typical goofy little kids but with one difference: our mom really swung the bat for us. She wasn’t goofy at all, she was tall and confident, and she formed a tiny fortress around everything that made us different. The result was that rather than being crushed by our own awkwardness, we developed a nerdy sort of swagger.

When Wes got flunked out of high-school French after a jock copied his quiz, our mom wanted to talk to the teacher about whether the real reason was a petition that Wes circulated to get the teacher fired. We begged Mom not to call. The situation was delicate. Her voice was quavering with excitement when she said, “Boys, I will handle this. We’ll have an adult conversation.”

She closed her bedroom door and made the call. We heard her say, “Hello is this Madame McLean? Yes… what? WELL YOU MADAME ARE A BITCH.”

BAM! She hung up the phone, and walked out with a giddy laugh. “Well, I had to do it,” she said. “She called Wes a cheater.” Wes finished French from the principal’s office. I saw the same giddiness a few years later, when I won Interlake High School’s “Mr. Interlake” competition. We hadn’t told her I was competing, and never said that I won by turning the competition into a kind of spoof.

Afterwards, I was one of the kids waiting at the curb to get picked up by a mom or dad. “What’s that?” Mom said, gesturing to the crown at my feet. When I explained it, I saw 18 years of worry — that her children might not be able to fit in — get thrown into the air. “Shouldn’t we go out and celebrate?” she said, as if a celebration could consist of just two of us. 

She came through in hard times too. When Wes broke his leg in college, he was treated in a giant county hospital in Chicago. His injury was so serious that nurses mentioned amputation. A surgeon ran a steel rod down his leg. Wes often wept in agony.

When Mom showed up on the scene, she said to the nurses, “You are not controlling his pain.” We were made to know that they had failed, not Wesley. “From now on, he won’t be in pain,” she said. Wesley wept again, this time with gratitude.

We thought about Chicago a lot when we brought Mom home, against everyone’s advice at the hospice. She smiled in the most regal way as her bed was lowered from the ambulance; Mom had swung the bat again. Even when Mom could hardly talk, she smiled a lot: when someone visited, when she got her way, when she got a kiss. The way she was in the last few weeks after Christmas, stripped of every pleasure but life itself, made it possible to believe that our fundamental state is happiness.

It was at that Chicago hospital that Mom ran into one of our first girlfriends. Even though it was Wes’s leg, and not both arms that were broken, Jody insisted on helping Wes pee in a cup. This began for our mom a new era of carefully watching our girlfriends. Browsing through clothes at the mall, she once told me I was the kind of 20 year-old who would marry the first person I slept with, out of gratitude.

When one of us was in a half-hearted relationship, our mom surprised us by telling us what “a thing” she had for my dad. “I think you really have to have a thing for someone you’re going to be with for a while.” It was the best advice we’ve ever gotten.

Both of us, Wes and I, have always taken our parents’ marriage as role models for our own. We knew from early on how much our parents loved each other because we saw what a complete psycho our dad became when Mom had her first cancer, in 1985. He was aggressive then about treatment when hopes were slim. He pulled u-turns in the middle of the road if we left something at the house. And on trips to the grocery or the mall, he told us we could spend whatever we wanted.

Later, when our mom had recovered and our dad visited me in college, I walked in late at night when Dad was telling someone on the phone, “I miss you and I just can’t wait to see you.” I grabbed the phone from Dad and asked who was on the other line. “Glenn,” Mom said firmly. “Put Lloyd back on.”

Our mom often assumed a forbearing attitude toward Dad, which was a miracle by itself, since he did so many crazy things: flipped a sailboat just offshore from a wedding; took the kids on a Sunday drive through an epic ice storm, which ended with an overturned station wagon; or planned a camping trip in which his 10 year-old children carried all their gear in their arms rather than on their backs.

She was the only person in the family who kept a grip on what was normal, yet she defended the family’s craziness as if it were her own. I still remember sitting on the patio with her, poking fun at Dad, when she interrupted me to say, “You know, your father is a deeply honorable man.” After more than 40 years of marriage, she admired our father. Each saved the other from a much different life, and neither ever forgot it.

But we never realized how much love our mother had to give until we had children. I’d always thought the ideal strategy in life was to do as much on your own for as long as possible before having kids. It didn’t occur to me until recently how much that decision has actually cost. Seeing my one-year-old son, Toby, lean over to hoist a rock, Mom would yell “TOBY, PICK UP THAT ROCK!” And then turn to me to say, “Look! He already understands! What a genius!” 

She was as fiercely protective of them as of us. When my niece, Sue, was in a new daycare that disciplined children by putting them outside – “like a dog,” as my mom said – Mom settled in to the playroom to watch over Sue. The daycare said our mom had to leave at some point, so she sat on a bench in sight of Sue for the rest of the day, knitting a blanket for another grandchild.

Even when Mom was very sick, she never tired of devising ways to delight our children. She told our 77-year-old dad to prance on all fours like a horse with one kid on his back; she made a train out of laundry baskets; she helped the kids frost their own cupcakes. And it all just seemed to fill our children up with joy, as wordless and abundant as sunshine. Wesley’s last conversation with our mom was about her determination to visit the grandchildren one more time, even though she couldn’t even get out of bed.

It has grieved us all that our own children – the oldest is five — won’t remember much of Mom. It grieved her too. Over the past year, Mom often asked people when their first memory was, listening intently for age 6 or 5 or 3. But my wife has convinced me that it’s the things you absorb before you can remember that make you the person you are. Our mom made a lot of people better.

And Frazier? He felt manipulated, humiliated and betrayed. "He had me
stunned," Frazier says. "This guy was a buddy. I remember looking at
him and thinkin', What's wrong with this guy? Has he gone crazy? He
called me an Uncle Tom. For a guy who did as much for him as I did,
that was cruel. I grew up like the black man—he didn't. I cooked the
liquor. I cut the wood. I worked the farm. I lived in the ghetto. Yes,
I tommed; when he asked me to help him get a license, I tommed for
him. For him! He betrayed my friendship. He called me stupid. He said
I was so ugly that my mother ran and hid when she gave birth to me. I
was shocked. I sat down and said to myself, I'm gonna kill him. O.K.?
Simple as that. I'm gonna kill him!"

****
Frazier quickened the tempo in the third and fourth, whaling Ali with
lefts and rights. Ali moved as he fired jabs and landed rights and
shouted at Frazier, "Do you know I'm God?"
"God, you're in the wrong place tonight," Frazier shot back. "I'm
takin' names and kickin' ass!"

***
A benumbed and exhausted Ali, his lips scraped raw, lay on a cot in
his locker room in Manila and summoned Marvis Frazier, Joe's
15-year-old son, to his side. "Tell your dad the things I said I
really didn't mean," Ali said.
Marvis reported back to his father. "He should come to me, son," Joe
told him. "He should say it to my face."

***
Came the sixth, and here it was, that one special moment that you
always look for when Joe Frazier is in a fight. Most of his fights
have shown this: You can go so far into that desolate and dark place
where the heart of Frazier pounds, you can waste his perimeters, you
can see his head hanging in the public square, maybe even believe that
you have him, but then suddenly you learn that you have not. Once more
the pattern emerged as Frazier loosed all of the fury, all that has
made him a brilliant heavyweight. He was in close now, fighting off
Ali's chest, the place where he has to be. His old calling card—that
sudden evil, his left hook—was working the head of Ali. Two hooks
ripped with slaughterhouse finality at Ali's jaw, causing Imelda
Marcos to look down at her feet, and the president to wince as if a
knife had been stuck in his back. Ali's legs seemed to search for the
floor. He was in serious trouble, and he knew that he was in
no-man's-land.
Whatever else might one day be said about Muhammad Ali, it should
never be said that he is without courage, that he cannot take a punch.
He took those shots by Frazier and then came out for the seventh,
saying to him, "Old Joe Frazier, why I thought you were washed up."
Joe replied, "Somebody told you all wrong, pretty boy."
Frazier's assault continued. By the end of the 10th round it was an
even fight. Ali sat on his stool like a man ready to be staked out in
the sun. His head was bowed, and when he raised it his eyes rolled
from the agony of exhaustion. "Force yourself, champ!" his corner
cried. "Go down to the well once more!" begged Bundini, tears
streaming down his face. "The world needs ya, champ!" In the 11th, Ali
got trapped in Frazier's corner, and blow after blow bit at his
melting face, and flecks of spittle flew from his mouth. "Lawd have
mercy!" Bundini shrieked.
The world held its breath. But then Ali dug deep down into whatever it
is that he is about, and even his severest critics would have to admit
that the man-boy had become finally a man. He began to catch Frazier
with long right hands, and blood trickled from Frazier's mouth. Now
Frazier's face began to lose definition; like lost islands reemerging
from the sea, massive bumps rose suddenly around each eye, especially
the left. His punches seemed to be losing their strength. "My god,"
wailed Angelo Dundee. "Look at 'im. He ain't got no power, champ!" Ali
threw the last ounces of resolve left in his body in the 13th and
14th. He sent Frazier's bloody mouthpiece flying into the press row in
the 13th and nearly floored him with a right in the center of the
ring. Frazier was now no longer coiled. He was up high, his hands
down, and as the bell for the 14th round sounded, Dundee pushed Ali
out saying, "He's all yours!" And he was, as Ali raked him with nine
straight right hands. Frazier was not picking up the punches, and as
he returned to his corner at the round's end the Filipino referee
guided his great hulk part of the way.
"Joe," said his manager, Eddie Futch, "I'm going to stop it."
"No, no, Eddie, ya can't do that to me," Frazier pleaded, his thick
tongue barely getting the words out. He started to rise.
"You couldn't see in the last two rounds," said Futch. "What makes ya
think ya gonna see in the 15th?"
"I want him, boss," said Frazier.
"Sit down, son," said Futch, pressing his hand on Frazier's shoulder.
"It's all over. No one will ever forget what you did here today."

When I was 21, I tutored kids in summer school, here in Seattle. Some of them were the smart kids trying to get ahead, but some were the tough kids, trying to catch up from a semester in juvie. The teacher pretty much let me teach the class. 

I loved the job. The students thought I was cool because I was just a bit older. Two of them, maybe 16 or 17 or hopefully 18, kept asking me when we would party together. Because they were marginal students, I especially wanted them to like me, so they'd try harder at school. I told them we could party maybe after the summer session ended, a promise I didn't think they'd remember.

At the end of the summer, they remembered. "You promised," they said. One of them lived in a rich guy's house, and he had it all to himself one weekend. I said, alright, I'll come over with some beers. I didn't want them to think an adult would break his promise.

Come Saturday, with the beer in the car, I started thinking it was wrong for a teacher to give booze to students. But I'd already said I would come, and I wasn't yet confident enough to change my mind in the middle of a mistake.

The house was very nice. It was tasteful too. The kids started drinking in an earnest way that took me aback -- I remember thinking, "I guess that's how parties start," because I hadn't actually been to too many myself. It was kind of touching that all of us expected the other person to know how to have a good time. The kid who lived there drank two beers, then took me downstairs, where I saw all these trophies encased in glass.

They looked too big to be high-school trophies. I didn't look too closely, because just seeing them made me feel ashamed. The kid who lived there -- he sort of looked like a very large Ice Cube -- said he wasn't supposed to tell anyone, but that this was Bill Russell's house.

I had a vague idea of who that was: not just a basketball champion -- he won two college championships, an Olympic medal and 11 professional championships, more than anyone ever has or will -- but someone who stood up for what was right. The kid told me that Bill Russell was very, very private, which made me feel more ashamed. I thought about why Bill Russell might have taken in someone who wasn't family, who'd been getting into trouble.  

I didn't know then that Russell was the first black to coach in the NBA, that his team was turned away from hotels, that he never accepted his election to the Hall of Fame because he felt it was the team -- not his own talents -- that had made him great, or that he refused to visit Fenway Park until new management convinced him it had exorcised the last vestiges of racism.

The kids got very drunk, and I saw how much older I was than them. They started to trash the place a bit too. I said I had to go, and for the only time in my life drove home drunk. 

I remember driving across a bridge on a lake, with the moon out and the waves frothing, and the whole world seeming wild and perfect except for me. I pulled over at one point because I was scared at my driving. But I kept driving because I didn't want anyone to know where I'd come from.

I wondered the next morning if the kid was telling the truth about Bill Russell -- what would he be doing in Seattle, anyway? And did the kid ever tell him that he got the beers from a teacher? Then I forgot about it.

But today I read in The New York Times that Bill Russell will win a Medal of Freedom Tuesday, and that he does indeed spend time in Seattle. The news account focused on his decision to skip Obama's inauguration so he could be with this wife, who was dying of cancer. It doesn't have anything to do my story, but his last quote moved me: 

"We held hands and watched the inauguration,” he said. “We sat there all night, and then I said, ‘Listen, I’m going to take a shower, now wait for me, I’ll be right back,’ and she said she’d wait. Well, as soon as I left she died. So I said to the nurse, ‘She promised she would wait,’ and the nurse said this happens quite commonly. A lot of people don’t want their loved ones to see them die. And so it was like we shared this moment together and she did not want me to see her die.”

He seems like a great person, and a good person, too. Would that we were all that way.

In this week's New Yorker, a chef named Gabrielle Hamilton wrote a memoir of her childhood in rural Pennsylvania, with a stunningly gorgeous opening:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_hamilton
(subscription required)

The Lamb Roast
We threw a party. The same party, every year, when I was a kid. It was a spring-lamb roast, and we laid out four or five whole little guys over an open fire and invited more than a hundred people. Our house was in rural Pennsylvania and was not really a house at all but a wild castle built into the ruins of a 19^th-century silk mill. Our back yard was not  a regular yard but a meandering meadow, with wild geese and a creek running through it. It was a lush setting. The beer, wine, and soda chilled in the creek, and the weeping willows bent their branches down over the water. We would braid a bunch together to make a kind of Tarzan rope to swing on, out over the stream in bathing suits and laceless sneakers, and land in the creek…

…My home town has become, mostly, a sprawl of developments and subdivisions, gated communities that look like movie sets that will be taken down at the end of the shoot. But, when I was young, it was mostly farmland – rolling fields, rushing creeks when it rained, thick woods, and hundred-year-old stone barns. You had to ride your bike about a mile down a dark country road thick with night insects to find even a plugged-in Coke machine. Outside Cal’s Collision Repair, that machine glowed like something almost religious.

Legal research from my twin brother, from the Restatement of Torts on infliction of emotional distress:

A, an eccentric and mentally deficient old maid, has the delusion that a pot of gold is buried in her back yard, and is always digging for it. Knowing this, B buries a pot with other contents in her yard, and when A digs it up causes her to be escorted in triumph to the city hall, where the pot is opened under circumstances of public humiliation to A. A suffers severe emotional disturbance and resulting illness. B is subject to liability to A for both.

I was in the Cambridge PL the other day and saw Ozzy's new memoir on display. I opened it to a page where Ozzy was describing how his manager put him on a Concorde to shoot a video; his schedule is tight and he is to take the Concorde back on the same day. Dazed, exhausted and strung out on drugs. The director of the video rushes Ozzy in and sits him down in front of a huge mirror and says in the video the mirror's going to explode. Ozzy writes that he was expecting this would be some high tech special effect. "They didn't tell me there was a bloke behind the mirror with a hammer..." I regret to say this was as far as I got before Sue got into trouble down the hall.

at 8 am on the Radcliffe quad four hours before kickoff I could hear chants from people chugging beer. I came back 20 mins later and there were 6 police cars, 2 ambulances and a fire truck, which I watched with Theo and another dad with a toddler.  The somber mood was broken when a person in Yale colors walked by and a window from one of the dorms opened a crack:  "YOU FUCKING SUCK!  YOU FUCKING SUCK! SAFETY SCHOOL!  SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFETY SCHOOL!"

(Wesley went to Yale for law school, but now lives on the Harvard campus)