All My Family Is Found

My birth family consists of my mother, father, older brother and older sister. My parents divorced when I was very young and our father was not in our life, save for the occasional and incredibly awkward holiday or birthday cross country phone call. He’d ask about school and sports and marching band, hanging up with a struggling “I love you”, his voice cracking like ice on a pond. My own voice cracks writing that just now. It was all very sad and complicated and felt so far away from me.

I was raised by a single mother, perhaps the toughest, most hard working, resilient, conflict avoidant Catholic of a mother there is. She had a sharp, dry wit and appreciated a sense of humor in others. Making my family laugh was always the greatest feeling in the world, especially her. It was approval, it was pride, it was her love in a small family that rarely said I love you out loud. If she were a movie, she’d be played pitch perfectly by Allison Janney, at every age. Lanky and commanding, equal parts earnest and eye roll, just like Janney.

Our next-door neighbors were the Pass family. David Pass was my age and the oldest of three kids. His parents were high school teachers, and his dad ran a small construction business on the side. Mrs. Pass was an artist, painting, illustrating, always crafting. She led David’s Cub Scout troop and welcomed me into their activities, knowing Girl Scouts wasn’t in the cards for me. She took me on outings with her kids: to the grocery store, the ball field, to visit her mother in a nursing home. She had capacity for me, what’s one more kid rolling around in the back seat of a station wagon without seatbelts? Found family.

The Passes owned the house we lived in and very rarely raised the rent. Mr. Pass fixed anything and everything, from plumbing to tree trimming, and though it wasn’t our house to own it was very much our home and they never made us feel otherwise. Their son David was in my grade and my best friend. His best friend was a kid named Mike Eagle Jr., who lived one street over on Captain’s Lane. His father, Mike Eagle Sr. was a very talented and highly decorated illustrator of the extremely popular “Clash of the Titans” storybook, which became a wildly popular movie by the same name, adapting the Greek myth of Perseus and Medusa. As young children, Medusa was the scariest shit we'd ever seen, and Mike Eagle Sr. brought it all to life. He was a real celebrity in our eyes.

Did it bother me, that Dave was my best friend, but I was not considered his? Of course. Did this set me on a path for life of giving too easily to others who were non-committal or aloof? Naturally. I do know I was a good friend to him, and he was to me, regardless of labels, childhood or the circumstances of our bond. He had a cool fort over the garage, a BB gun and real Japanese throwing stars. We had adventures and experiences and a true childhood together. No matter what best friend Mike Eagle, Jr.’ said or did, David and I went hard as friends. We rode dirt bikes together, mine a Huffy, his a Diamond Back. The Passes bought their bikes at actual bike stores, not at grocery stores like us. I’m kidding. All our bikes were from tag sales, with just one weird thing wrong that was always unfixable but manageable. Like how the handlebars came off my bike every time I hopped a curb or pulled a wheelie. No helmets, no sir. Man, the eighties were wild.

We patrolled our neighborhood like it was our job, pretending to be Crocket & Tubbs from Miami Vice or GI Joe, or GI Joe on a working vacation in Miami. We ran through the yards between our two houses every day and every night, all year round. Playing capture the flag and flashlight tag. Re-enacting scenes from recent A-Team episodes, reciting lines word for word. We spent hours playing Atari and pouring over Mad Magazines at his house, a small three bedroom that Mr. Pass built himself, was heated with a wood stove and always smelled like syrup. Sweetness literally hung in the air at the Passes' house. They were one of the first families to have a VCR at home. We watched many age-inappropriate movies like Rambo, Caddy Shack and Where the Boys Are 84. We loved Saturday morning cartoons like Super Friends, He-Man and Scooby Doo, especially the Globetrotter episodes. We walked to the school bus together every morning and back home every afternoon. There was a rhythm to this life, second grade through middle school, a sameness to our days that was comforting and dependable. A true routine.

And then we grew up. I got into theater and playwriting; he became very popular, physically attractive and extremely cool. We remained neighbors but no longer friends. And that’s how it goes sometimes. We choose each other until we don’t. We find each other until we can't, or simply start hanging out with other people. When my mother died five years ago, Mr.& Mrs. Pass walked into the funeral, and it took my breath away. In an instant, they were the closest thing I had to living parents, just standing there in the doorway, speaking in condolences like everybody else. At the reception after, my wife and I sat with them the whole time, at a corner table away from everyone. I wanted them all to myself. I would have sat at the table all night if I could, just to have parents again. When we said goodbye, Mrs. Pass hugged me and held onto me, really held me. It wasn't forever but it was forever found, for which I am forever grateful.

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