Tom was incredible; he was also a mistake. A conversation started over greasy pizza, a pair of boat shoes, and a disengaged heart. I began out of necessity, believing I would be taking one for the team–the complaints that hadn’t yet been voiced from this man who clearly didn’t belong.
It was the first dinner I sat down for and the first one I wasn’t attacked. Tom was from Florida and not supposed to be in charge, but an unexpected death sent the woman responsible for the youth in Brooklyn home. And there was Tom–the knight in the white 12 passenger van–to the rescue.
He’d been along for the ride and now he was driving through the streets of Chinatown. He walked with them all over Manhattan–Times Square, Rockefeller, Central Park, Ground Zero. He took them to Saks, sweet man that he was, and let them discover the price tags on the platform shoes. And they left Saks and went to New Jersey where he treated them to dinner.
“I’m not used to this,” he told me, shaking his head. And over pizza I learned that his home was a golf and yacht club and his days consisted of golf, golf, and more golf. A building with no a/c, an air mattress, chasing after kids in the park–that was a challenge for him. “This is outside my comfort zone.”
And I learned that Tom used to play professional baseball, and his brother played for the Yankees, and Tom once pitched a no-hitter. And he used to run his own pharmaceutical company and at one point he belong to two country clubs. And his first house had 4 bedrooms. He never wanted for anything. H told me: “Life is about being in the right place at the right time, ya know… but sometimes I really wish that we’d have just had a card table and some crates to sit on so we’d really get it.”
If that wasn’t enough to make you love Tom, maybe him riding the Cyclone for the first time ever will get you. He’s not supposed to do anything that strains his heart, but he told his wife and then me, “If I’m going to die–why shouldn’t it be on that thing?” Or the way he confessed, “I cannot wait to go home and have a strong drink.” Or how he won the hearts of the ladies at the senior center and made their day by flirting back.
That is Tom and the story of how joy comes in the least expected places and why I can keep putting one foot in front of the other and carrying on.
