Disjointed afterthoughts (Written early on the morning of November 11).

It was a blur. It's still a blur and it's the next morning. I don't know that I've ever talked to that many people that I wanted to talk to or who wanted to talk to me. My brain is still spinning from all of the thoughts, my own and those of others, all the words, all the faces all of the pictures of my mother projected up on the big screen.

We all kept saying my mom would've love this. I'm not sure if she would've liked all the focus on her, but it wasn't like she hated having any focus on her. She just didn't think it was all about her. Which this wasn't either, it was about all of us getting together to talk about and celebrate the life of someone who affected many people.

People who came to this thing knew my mom for different lengths of time and with different levels of closeness. Those who have known her the longest were not surprised by much of anything anyone said. Those who knew her less well must've been shaking their heads in amazement.

A lot of people really really really loved my mom. On the surface of all it was a simple as that. But with her openness and her positive outlook, she affected everyone in different ways. She affected them in whatever way made sense for them. She knew it wan't about her, She was just a facilitator.

It seemed to start earlier faster than I had anticipated. Ronnie and I got to the city around 1:30 and walked over to the theater. It's a beautiful little theater, with a lovely lobby with a bar in the middle that made for a great receiving area.

I went inside the theater to get used to the space and run through what I was going to say, and by the time I came out to the lobby, it seems as if people were already coming.

Although I knew off the bat that my remarks would be inspired by all of the pictures that I scanned, it took me a very long time to actually come up what I want to say. It's complicated, you know, it was my mother. And like most parent child relationships it had its ups and downs, some lefts, some rights, some spins around that seemed random and needless and dumb but end up adding up to a life of some sort.

It was people I'd seen last week, people I'd seen last month, people I've seen last year, and people I've seen in the last century. Literally seeing people who I had not seen in probably 20-30 years. They all recognize me, want to talk to me and for the most part, I recognized them. I knew their connection with my mom and with my family and with me. There were just a ton of them.

The thing is, we never had a funeral or wanted to have a funeral. My mom’s end of life came in such a way that it didn't seem proper or I don't know, it didn't seem right to have a funeral. Plus my dad would have none of it, because we decided at the time the last thing mom would want to be a bunch of people sitting around morning her. That would have been completely antithetical to everything she stood for and everything she was. So we decided to plan a celebration, my brother, my sister, my father and I. We all decided how we are going to contribute to make it happen. As I mentioned, my main part was to scan all the old photos.

My brother focused mostly on picking the venue and deciding what the program would be. We would have a few key people speak- family and close friends, a half-dozen of them. And then we would open up the mic for anybody who wanted to speak as well. And the tone was not to be mournful at all. It was to be light, fun, uplifting if possible, but the kind of thing my mom would've enjoyed.

We started planning in the summer, and decided to do it in early November, before the holidays really got going and weather might interfere with people getting here, because people were going to come from all over. My sister had the task of whittling down the guest list, and cajoling my father into not inviting every single person my mom ever knew, because the theater only held 300 people.

So we settled the time, place, and guest list. wWe invited people; they RSVPed. it was happening some time in the future. Then suddenly it was time. The programs were printed, with people arranged to speak in a particular order, attendees made their travel plans, all that stuff.

Strip it down to the bare minimum and this is what it was. I stood in the lobby of the theater, greeted over 200 people. Then it was into the auditorium, where I sat down and waited my turn, got up onstage said some stuff. It was very bight on the stage- I couldn’t see anyone. 

Then I came down off the stage and watched the rest of the people speak. Some were serious and heartfelt. Some were funny, some were both. And mine, I think, was kind of raw and unhinged, but people seemed to like it. Then we showed a video with a montage of the photos I’d scanned. And the program was over. Right on time. About an hour and a half all told. We took some photos and then out to the lobby again, where I got to talk to all of the people I'd spoken to on the way in and many many more. For another hour and a half.

At this point, around 7:00, a select few, 70 of us all told, gathered for dinner upstairs. I sat with my wife and cousin and made no effort to circulate because everyone was coming to me.

Dinner was good, I think, though I don't really remember the food or eating. Talking, talking, talking and then about an hour after it was supposed to end, it finally ended at 10:00. And we came back to the hotel, I went out and bought a beer but didn't drink it and fell asleep on the end of the bed while Ronnie and Celia sat in bed and watched TV.

Looking back, that was one of the most intense experiences of my life. Not everything that everyone said was an emotional outpouring or deeply meaningful, but the cumulative effect was as if it had been. I feel completely wrung out. And now I'm left waiting for the blur to clear somehow.  All those people and all the stuff they said. It's simply overwhelming and pretty damned wonderful.

I'm one of those now.

I bought a car a few weeks ago. It’s not a new car, but it’s much newer than the car I traded in for it. And it’s much nicer too. I bought a 2011 BMW 328, which is classified as an “entry-level luxury” vehicle, whatever the hell that means. I guess it means that I’ve entered something somehow. I’m in the world of luxury vehicles and I can never leave.

But that’s okay I guess. Part of me feels a little sheepish- I’m not and have never been a car person. I mean I am in that I own cars and drive them, but they’ve never been anything I really cared about beyond their ability to take me from place to place. I’d been driving a 2007 Toyota Camry for nearly 8 years and had loved it. But one of my kids cracked it up and a few years later the windshield seal failed causing a leak that left the car with a permanent musty smell. It was old and beat and I was tired of it.

But a BMW? I only know one thing about people who drive BMWs and that is that they’re assholes. They zip around in their sportily little luxury car and make veryone else crazy. I hate them. And now I’m one of them.

And why wouldn’t I stick with the kind of car I’ve always bought? I guess I decided that at this point I deserved something a little nicer. I focused on finding a low-mileage used car at a reputable dealer. I had a list of several cars that I was going to try and looked at the BMW first because the dealer is 3 blocks from my house. And as soon as I started driving the car I knew that was it. There was no need to look any further. It’s 3 years old and has 16,000 miles on it, so it fit that part of the checklist. But what made it easy was the driving part.

I’ve mostly driven mid-level Japanese cars- Hondas and Toyotas. Very reliable and not unpleasant. They felt like they were designed from the point of view of creating a reliable, safe machine for transportation. The BMW feels like it was designed from a driver’s perspective, where the driving experience leads to the engineering, rather than the other way around. But really I’m not sure. What I do know is that the car feels completely intuitive to drive. I feel connected to it instead of just sitting in it.

That probably sounds weird. It feels weird to write. But it’s very much like how it felt when I got my bicycle last summer. As soon as I sat down and started pedaling I knew it was right, and I knew this was right too.

That said, it still feels weird to think it’s my car. It feels too grown up for me, though I’m nearly 60. And now I’m one of those people who drives a BMW. But as my daughter told me, my wife got a puppy and I got a BMW, so we must be officially empty nesters now. So I guess I’m one of those too.

Nothing about Derek Jeter

I've been in hibernation. Well, not exactly. I've not been passing the winter in a torpid or resting state. And how annoying is it to look up a definition and find that you then need to look of the definition of one of the words in the definition? I can kind of guess what torpid means, but has anyone ever actually used that word?

Oh good, I start writing again and already I'm ranting about something. So I wasn't hibernating; it only feels that way. I could blame it on the puppy. One of the best reasons to have a dog is that you can blame stuff on them. Or that I haven't done anything. But I have. I just haven't gotten myself sat down to write.

This takes me back to my college days. By the time I'd gotten to junior year and had figured out how college worked, I specifically took classes that had final exams instead of papers. Because exams happen no matter what you do. Papers only happen if you write them. Same with any other writing, apparently. No matter how brilliant my thoughts may have been, unless I write them down and publish them, nobody will ever read them.

So I'll eventually circle back to the other stuff I've done (buy a car, go to the next-to-last Allman Bros. concert, that kind of thing), but first I want to write about nothing about Derek Jeter.

My mom, as many of you know, passed away this summer after suffering with ALS for nearly 15 years. My parents have been major supporters of the ALS Association since finding out the nature of my mom's illness, and the New York chapter's main fundraiser is a sports dinner banquet thing that they do every year a week or so after the World Series. The MC is Bob Costas and they always have great guests. Sometimes I get autographs, sometimes I chat with the athletes (I went up to the tennis player Pam Shriver to tell her how much I enjoyed watching her play doubles and all she did was whine to me about her kids) and sometimes I just eat and drink and hang out with my dad.

Last year was a huge deal, because the guest of honor was Mariano Rivera, whom I got to meet and have my picture taken with. Because my dad is a big sponsor, we have a table right up front, and Mariano (we're tight now so I can call him by his first name) was at the next table. They always have security for the special guests. They keep you from asking for autographs while the speaking program is going on or when they're eating. Mariano had a guy stationed behind him and if you asked at the wrong time, they'd politely say that you should wait until after dinner or whatever.

So this year, Derek Jeter was an unannounced guest. I'm honestly not sure why he was there. He helped present something to someone, and he donated some items for auction (to quote the auctioneer, "Who wants to bid on some shit Derek Jeter doesn't want anymore?"), which I bid on in rather spirited fashion. He didn't utter a word that was audible to anyone. And he sat at the table right next to us with his post-adolescent girlfriend.

For this occasion, Mr. Derek Jeter was assigned not one, but three security guards. One stood behind, one to the left and one to the right. And you were not allowed to even walk past that side of the table. Now mind you, I think the lowest price of admission was $250 per ticket and the sponsors' tables were $25,000 for 10 tickets. That may actually be understating it. So it wasn't exactly a bunch of rabble there. It was a crowd of rich white guys in suits. The president of the Bank of New York, for instance, was the one who outbid me for the Jeter items. Business people and some sports people as well. This was not the tailgate crowd in Silver Linings Playbook.

So I was there for 2 1/2 hours and Mr. Jeter was kept apart from the other attendees for the entire time, though if you were persistent enough you might have been able to get the security guard to pass him something to autograph. I guess eventually they loosened up a bit because my daughter got her picture taken with him. But I never saw it.

So why was this guy even there? I'd call him a jerk, but this post is nothing about Derek Jeter.