The Lesson of the Ant.

Back when I was a little boy, our family took in another child named Manny for a summer, and while I'd like to think that at a tender 7 or 8 years old, I understood the importance of heroic hospitality, I did not. Manny was a jerk to me, and I did not like him. He lied about stuff and got me in trouble - or so I remember it, anyway. Then, one Sunday morning, we were at mass at St. Thomas Aquinas on the West Side of Binghamton. All six of us were there. Mom, Dad, me, my older brother Jay, and younger brother Ed - who was probably under three years old at the time, and Manny.

I never liked church. It was boring and stupid, and if not for the little wooden dowels you could pop out of the missalette rack with a carefully prizing fingernail, I would have lost my boyish mind altogether. But the ONE THING during mass that didn't suck was when the deacons and altar boys came around for the offertory collection.

It's not that I understood what was really happening, but at least we could move around a little bit. Also, because we took religious education classes on Wednesday afternoons, my brother Jay and I had these tiny envelopes into which we would seal two quarters and then dutifully drop them into the basket when it came around.

But that Sunday, when I got my little envelope out of my terribly rigid Sears and Roebuck polyester suitcoat pocket, my mom said, "Give your envelope to Manny today. Let him put it in the collection basket."

I looked at her with fiery eyes. What the hell did she think she was doing? He was mean to me, and now I was supposed to let HIM have the honor of dropping my two bits into the coffers?

I refused, so my dad got involved. He leaned over and said, "Listen to your mother, Mike. We'll talk about it later." Then he took the envelope from my tiny hands and gave it to Manny, who looked at me with a truly contemplable smile of victory. My parents may have been doing good works by bringing him into the family circle for a time, but that dude was a jerk.

Anyway, after the collection was done, I went back to sulking and trying to pry the wooden dowels out of the rack while boiling away inside at how deeply unjust the world was to ME personally. Clearly, no one in the world had to suffer indignities worse than that jerk Manny.

Later on that afternoon, I was out in front of our house on Orton Ave mowing the lawn - ANOTHER indignity - and my dad came out to have the talk. He put his hand on my shoulder and explained to me, as best as he could to a 7-year-old, that Manny didn't have a lot of fun in his life. He lived in what my dad said was a "slum," and while I didn't know the world, it sounded awful. He said that Manny didn't get presents for Christmas because his family didn't have any money, so we decided that he could live with us for a while to get some "fresh air."

My dad asked me, very seriously, what was more important. Was it giving fifty cents to the church, or was it "letting someone else have a win?"

I got it. I did. But I was still pissed off and didn't understand why someone ELSE couldn't give Manny a win. Why did it have to be me?

Just then, a black ant - one of the really, really big ones - walked out of the grass of our lawn and onto the sidewalk, and with the uncontrollable rage of a terrible god, I lifted up my foot and smashed it flat.

It was, though against a tiny creature, an act of self-conscious murder. I killed that bug because I could. I killed it to express my power. I killed it to show the world that I could kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.

My dad, who had been loving and gentle until he saw me do that, became stern. Not angry, but stern and lordly. He grabbed my shoulder just firmly enough that I knew I'd done wrong.

When I looked up, he said, with real pain and disappointment in his voice, "What did that ant ever do to hurt you???"

I cried. I cried and knew I'd done something terribly wrong.

Then my dad put his hand on my shoulder and told me - as he and mom often did when I was bad, "We'll always love you. But we won't always love the things that you do. Don't do that ever again."

I promised him I wouldn't, and while I've certainly stepped on my share of ants again in this life on accident, I've never risen up in anger and wrath at a defenseless being. (Mosquitos and venomous spiders excluded.)

I'm telling you this story because a few weeks ago, I was back home in Binghamton, helping around the house and making sure my folks were okay. Part of the standard routine is, weather permitting, to go out for a few daily walks with Dad. We walk up Orton Avenue to Grand Boulevard and hang a right, making it down past Crestmont on a good day to the Pompi's house - family friends who have lived in the neighborhood, like us, for more than fifty years.

My dad now uses a walker and is on supplemental oxygen to support his breathing. It's hard for him. He's in pain most of the time, but he presses on, often leaning hard on the walker handles and fighting to catch his breath under the strain. But he always wants to do it. He is committed to the struggle to maintain his health so that he can be here for me and my mom and brothers Jay and Ed. The walks are slow, as he is not fleet of foot any longer - except, it seems when the need suddenly arises.

On the walk in question, we'd made it to Pompi's house and were on the return leg near the corner of Minerva Avenue, and my dad suddenly veered his walker to the right. Thinking he was falling, I reacted to grab him by the shoulder to steady his pace, but then he turned back to the left, skipping his feet a bit in the process. I looked down at the ground to see what made him jump and noticed a great big black ant was hustling away toward the safety of the tall green grass. I'm sure that, to my dad, that act of simple human decency didn't ring with the resonances of the ages. He just didn't want to hurt that little fella on the sidewalk. But for me, it was a slipstream back through time to a Sunday afternoon, half a century before, and the beautiful realization that, to my very atoms, I am my father's son.

Your lessons stick. Da. Never doubt that your lessons stick. So thanks for everything, and happy 82nd Birthday. I love you more than words can say. Here's to more years, more walks, and more time, side by loving side.

(And love to you all, as well.)