Ten Terrific Days

Appreciating a run of some really good stuff

There are times in life, if you’re very lucky, and you’re me, you wish there was a pause button. For those magical if often fleeting moments of wildly above average joy, pride, oneness with the universe that are so gosh darn positive you want to preserve them in amber so whenever you feel particularly shitty you can remember that time you really liked your life and virtually everyone in it and maybe even a little bit the world too.

Less often, a series of magical moments is somehow strung together and lasts for days, and on rare occasions even a week or two. This can happen even when you’re kind of old, which I suppose is a penetrating glimpse of the obvious, but I’ve never been kind of old before and I assume some of you aren’t even close, so I offer this as if I were hiking ahead of you and left a cairn to mark something very cool you would not want to miss.

It started ten days ago when we went to Philadelphia to celebrate the fall opening of Freedom Side, an independent school for kids with incarcerated family members. Our eldest has worked on this for 2 ½ years, a project occasioned by a group of activist grandmothers in West Philly who had the crazy idea that generation after generation of kids shouldn’t grow up without parents because some of us are too scared to go outside unless we’re guaranteed that bad guys always go to jail forever. Grandmothers who saw a massive problem and instead of throwing up their hands rolled up their sleeves, found some allies and got to work trying a different and in this case better way.

The event was at a pop-up beer garden with a “uniquely West Philly feel” which I’m glad I only now discovered as I would have wasted entirely too much time trying to figure out what that was. The whole thing was dazzling, life-affirming, a slew of the best adjectives, an elixir of people of all ages and colors and everything else there for one reason: to help heal some kids and in so doing the entire world eventually.

Mostly it was a chance to meet and talk to folks on the Freedom Side side, and they’re all unsurprisingly lovely and welcoming with inviting smiles and almost universally terrific hair and distinctive personal vibes that on their own are pretty compelling but en masse are an exceptional treat. I got a chance to catch up with two of Alison’s best friends from college, each of whom is a personal delight and doing important, mission-driven work, and as an old fart it’s just so great to see your kids’ friends become the stellar adults you always knew they’d be but given the funfest of a world they got to come of age in it’s all the more impressive. Hopefully it comes as no surprise to my kids’ close friends that they are among the most treasured people on my planet, for in addition to making me laugh almost constantly, they are the stewards to whom we have entrusted our children’s happiness. No pressure.

The few short speeches were heartfelt and uplifting, but mostly it was a fun party where everyone seemed to feel good about the project’s past, present and future, and stuff like that is always worth celebrating. As the parents of Alison and lifters of maybe three fingers to help set up for the event we were wined and dined with what we deemed slightly excessive but unassailably heartfelt gratitude, which is all to say that it would have been an A++ evening even if I hadn’t gotten to listen to Alison answer a radio reporter’s questions for a good 15 minutes.

Both my kids have long been great talkers—quotable as hell—which as an old sports reporter fills me with acceptably irrational pride. Unless you’ve tried wrenching meaningful, multi-syllabic analysis from a 16-year-old hockey player moments after a big game you can’t know what a fool’s errand it is. I almost always failed on the many occasions I tried, so watching my son Max effortlessly fill a Montgomery Gazette reporter’s notebook with stellar quotes had me big-time kvelling (a Yiddish word meaning bursting with pride you should feel free to use even if you have nary a drop of Jewish blood in you because it’s too fun a word not to).

But that was piss-ant kvelling compared to listening to Alison’s masterful media turn at the Freedom Side event. They answered the questions they were asked directly and fully while always ensuring the message delivered had maximum positive impact for the school, which = the kids. That’s one of the things that makes this effort seem to my admittedly untrained eye so pure of purpose, that while their fight is against horrifying things like mass incarceration and life without parole, the project’s existential explanation is the kids. And because this crowd is nothing if not fully inclusive, a few kids wandered through the party just having the best time in that way kids do that’s so annoyingly elusive as an adult. One was just walking around with a clipboard like she was the single most important person on the planet and a smile to match, while another took the mike and stirred the crowd like no one else that night. If after all this you’re interested in finding out more and/or supporting Freedom Side, please go to www.freedomsideschool.org.

The hits kept coming the next morning, when we got to see the public library where Alison works, and it had recently been renovated and so, while it lacks the sheer volume of books old farts like me and mine are used to, it has great natural light and just seems a lovely place to be where, unlike every place else in the world, nobody demands you buy something in order to use any and all of its stuff, or just sit there.

We got home in time for me to play tennis with a coveted hitting partner who’s way better than me, then had fun folks over that night. I spent most of Sunday writing something I really liked, a never to be taken for granted treat, and Monday was Getting Shit Done Day, because Tuesday I was going to Minnesota to visit friends and attend the wedding of a young man I’ve been a huge fan of since I met him when he was 3. Under these unusual if most excellent circumstances, I embraced Getting Shit Done Day with an almost irrational level of enthusiasm.

First on the list was getting shorn—see https://jonathankronstadt.substack.com/p/shorn-in-the-usa for the full 411 on my harrowing haircut history. Then I had to go pick up my suit from, and I’m quite certain I’ve never typed these two words together in this order before, my tailor. I had other shit to do that apparently does not merit mention, and since I think we all know by now I would never gloss over something just because it was unmentionable, it’s for the best.

I flew to Minneapolis a few days before the wedding to see two of my favorite people and my absolute favorite dog. Early June rivals September for honors as the best time to be in the Twin Cities. Took the dog to the lake and watched him do his best small motorboat impersonation, lucked into being there for my pals’ daughter’s birthday lunch, played nine holes with new fun people and my longtime golfing guru, had a great two-hour catch-up with someone I hadn’t seen for 30 years, all making for a crazy fun few days before rendezvousing with one wife and two friends and motoring 90 minutes southeast to Weddingtown.

Beans the dog—full name: Full of Beans—is customarily much more excited to see me, but this was after he had retrieved the same ball from the waters of Cedar Lake about 1,8000 times.

The groom in this wedding equation is one-fourth of a family we consider family. He and his sister sandwiched Max in a cherished two-year pre-school class where we learned most of what we have now forgotten about parenting and made some of the best friends we ever hope to have, so a pretty good deal that. The groom asked me to do a reading of a poem he and his bride picked out, and while I do get really nervous speaking in front of people, there was no way I could turn down such public recognition of my own importance.

Along our drive was a small-town diner that shared its name with one of our foursome and got 4.7 stars on Yelp, so because we are not insane we went there and had terrific food, saw the moving water the town is named for and toodled on our way.

The Friday night event was awesome, and it didn’t hail or otherwise disrupt the proceedings in a typically summer evening in Southern Minnesota manner. Got to pal around and revisit my SoMinn years (1981-1984) with the bride’s dad, who was wearing a Phillies’ Hawaiian shirt owing to his Jersey roots, which would be just a fun throwaway if you didn’t know his counterpart in the proceedings owns an Orioles’ Hawaiian shirt, as does every member of his nuclear family. Had a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream with M&Ms, blondie pieces and salted caramel sauce, which reminded me that weddings are full of treats for good little guests like me.

We weary travelers stayed at the party to what we all agreed was a respectable hour, even considering we had virtually nothing we had to do before the next day’s 4 pm nuptials. Today has been very chill, as I’ve been mostly writing this and everyone else went off into Strangerland in search of lunch and exotic regional specialties. (They did find Minnesota’s first—opened in 1947—and oldest operating Dairy Queen.)

If you knew my family well you’d know that writing this as I have—as a tied-with-a-bow tale of joy, pride, and no one at all screwing up, especially me—before all events have concluded would be considered an impossibly stupid tempting of fate, bad luck, jinx, call it what you want, as it wears many masks and most folks I’m related to fear all of them. But my son cured of me of lifelong superstitions when, before a particularly important hockey game, for which I likely dressed, ate and sat in ways dictated by the supremely irrational belief that somehow my actions could influence the game’s outcome, he said the following: “Dad, I think superstitions are bad luck.” Something in my brain clicked, and the colossally addle-minded nature of superstitions became crystal clear and they disappeared from my life forever.

LATER…

Okay now all events have concluded, and as expected I didn’t jinx shit, but only because jinxes are not now nor have they ever been a thing. That was directed at a few people who know who they are, and I apologize to the rest of you for the diversion and all the extraneous x’s.

The wedding was wonderful, the kind where it’s as clear as these things get that these two people belong together. There was a lot of talk of each enabling the other to be the best version of themselves, which can sound sort of boiler plate if you don’t know the people, but if you do you just nod your head because it’s all so accurate. For my second wedding in a row, it really seemed if you didn’t know either principal but listened to the officiant’s remarks and both vows, you’d know them enough to know this was a good place to be. It was one of those rare moments when everyone present was as present as they likely get because we were all so happy to be there. Everyone was a piece of the puzzle of the bridal duo’s lives, and it’s always weird but almost always terrific when all the pieces wind up in the same room. Worlds collided happily to the Killers and other 21^st century wedding staples, and after a while some of us older folks left the barn and wandered outside for some air and quiet while the next gen jumped up and down to music because it’s fun.

It was a gorgeous night, and the storms that were predicted all week and caused parents of brides and grooms to knit their brows and check their weather apps with disturbing frequency went somewhere else, which I’m taking as yet another endorsement of the union, because I want to and it’s my essay.

The reading went fine, although I ‘d be lying if I said I hadn’t wondered shortly before my name was called if sudden onset Tourette’s is a thing. And the Monday morning quarterback in me came out when the other non-family reader faced the happy couple during her offering, while I faced the crowd and gave the couple two or three looks at key points in the poem. But because I was with people who are fond of me, I got reassurance I shouldn’t have needed that mine was the better choice for what I was reading. And there’s a palpable afterglow this morning, as I was really honored to be a part of this whole thing, and I don’t know about you but I don’t spend a ton of time feeling honored.

I felt a lot of things in the past 10 days and save for a few customary aches and pains it’s been literally all good. Despite the swirling shitshow of a globe at present, I got sugar-spun with optimism, purpose, commitment, joy, and people living their values out loud for as many as possible to hear. It was downright inspiring.