ONCE THERE WAS A WAY TO GET BACK HOMEWARD

I entered a long weekend distracted and kind of disjointed. The mingled aroma of the past, present, and future was swirling around me, encouraging a fog.

As I set out to drive my daughter to what was ultimately the wrong dojo for her white-belt test, She Loves You came on the radio. Alvin and the Chipmunks’ version.

I heard a giggle rise up from the backseat. “I know this song!” my daughter chirped. My head began to bob back and forth, and I started to sing along in my best approximation of a heliumated Beatle.

We laughed together through two right turns and the length of a stoplight.

Later that same day, as we prepared for her birthday party, I heard All You Need is Love.

And I remembered a moment when I was driving with my mother back from Mt. Sinai Hospital, where my brother laid in ICU recovering from a liver transplant.

I remembered how we listened to the same song on that long quiet drive, and how our eyes met when we heard the line “No one you can save that can’t be saved.”

I remembered how I said to her in a near whisper, “I know. I know.”

I remembered that this same day full of dojos and birthday parties would have been my brother’s 45th birthday.

Happy Birthday Jeff. Happy Birthday…