My Godson Max

My brother, Mike, and his wife, Lorraine Button Tracy, got the hell out of Dodge in 1978 after Lorraine found a note on her desk that read: “Get out by December 1 or we will kill you.” This was right before the Iranian hostage crisis.

Lorraine said that she considered the turmoil there as serious, but not as bad as the American press made it out to be. Yet, before they left, Mike and Lorraine heeded signals to vamoose after spending five sleepless nights listening to gunfire and baleful chanting two blocks from their apartment in northern Tehran. One of their friends had been fired upon from behind—the bullet propelled by an American-made M-16 rifle.

But until that incident, they tried to maintain some semblance of normalcy. Mike said they could go out for a few beers and needed to get home before a 9 p.m. curfew. My brother and sister-in-law left many possessions behind. However, they sold their car and some furniture before the situation escalated further.

A booked departure on Air France didn’t pan out since the carrier halted flights into Iran. So, Lorraine’s employer stepped in and facilitated an exit plan. I don’t recall fearing for their safety. My life—to this point in 1978 and for about seven years beyond—had been a rose garden. I felt nothing bad could happen to my family.

∞

Mike and Lorraine’s first boy, my godson Max, came into the world in Rotterdam in May 1983. Our first cousin, Dr. Paul Keating, an anesthesiologist, helped with the delivery. He says he needed a catcher’s mitt to field Max when he entered the world at unusual velocity. The little guy couldn’t wait to get here. 

My mom and dad heard a knock on their door one day. My dad got there first. He saw a car seat on the stoop with an infant in it. He’d always been a nervous sort. I wasn’t home but I’m pretty sure the conversation went like this:

“Oh, Lord. Who the hell would leave a baby… maybe it was kidnapped. Call somebody, Anne. Call the cops,” my dad said. “Is Molly home? Tell her to get over here. We could get in trouble. Maybe someone'll think we picked this baby up from somewhere. Anne, c’mon, ya gotta…”

“What in the world…,” my mom said before Mike and Lorraine emerged from hiding.

“Michael, you scared the hell out of me,” my dad said. “I thought I was gonna have a heart attack. Holy mackerelandy.”

I always thought “mackerelandy” was one word until I discovered it came from a suspect radio show my dad listened to as a very young lad.

“Meet your first grandchild, Oma and Opa,” my sister-in-law said with a wide smile. Oma and Opa are Dutch for grandma and grandpa. Those names stuck for all the subsequent grandchildren. Even for my brother Ned’s son, who wouldn’t meet my mom until 2019 at age 39.

Mike lived in San Francisco before leaving for the Middle East, where Lorraine quickly worked her way up the corporate ladder. She held a position as an executive for Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems before it sold to General Motors. They visited Pittston from the City by the Bay where Mike’s letters home along with pictures of Coit Tower and Golden Gate Park and Pier 39 increased my love for the Barbary Coast and the San Francisco Giants.

Mike is a storyteller. My mom couldn’t help but laugh at his jokes and in other instances, she rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know where Michael came from,” my mom said, shaking her head while looking toward the heavens. “Where does he get this stuff?”

“Did you ever think he gets it from the Keatings, mom,” I replied.

“Well, maybe,” she said. “But the Tracys are bullshitters, too.”

It might be good that she and my dad were only around long enough to know the half of it.

In Belgium where my brother Mike resided in 1990, the famous Cleveland Indian Bob Feller led an Ambassadors of Baseball team making a stop in Brasschaat. The team featured Graig Nettles, Paul Blair, and my brother Ned’s beloved Dave Kingman, who whiffed frequently but hit majestic home runs among his seventy-seven dingers in a Giants uniform.

Mike has a booming voice that could knock a jackal off a carcass. So, when the burgeoning Flemish baseball fans searched for a stadium announcer with baseball knowledge, they chose my brother. He chatted with Rapid Robert as the Brasschaat Braves took their positions on the field.

My godson Max acted as official bat boy for the Americans, and I’m not sure if any of his St. Louis Cardinals made the roster. Like his mom Lorraine, Max had blue eyes and blonde hair with a sparkling smile.

When Mike and Lorraine visited from the Netherlands in 1991, my wife Karen and I had been married less than a year. We had no children then, so Max’s parents gave us a parental preview. 

Mike and Lorraine ate a peaceful lunch and ran some errands while Max and his brother, Eamon, stayed with us. We couldn’t figure out what to do with these little human beings. We fed them first. That seemed like the obvious thing.

Eamon, who now stands at 6’5”, ate us out of house and home—mostly bagels and hot dogs— before Karen decided on paddle boating. I protested. I’d been around these children—aged eight and five—often enough to know this idea was a mistake.

When we paddled to the middle of the lake, Max said something like, “Aunt Karen, look at the big turtle.”

“I don’t see it, honey,” she said.

“It’s way over there,” he insisted and pointed.

“I can’t see it. I need glasses I guess.”

“It’s okay. I don’t see him anymore. I think he’s gone,” Max said.

Max turned Karen away from Eamon, who threw her sandals in the drink. We didn’t notice until the boat traveled a hundred yards away from the drop zone. The sandals floated but didn’t stay paired up. I reversed course.

Plucking the footwear out of the water without falling from the boat took another 10 minutes while we circled them and clutched at them without taking our eyes off the kids. We needed a fishing net. I needed a nap. And oxygen. The boys didn’t need anything but more chaos. 

Back at our apartment, Karen said, “What time did Mike and Lorraine say they were getting back?”

“They didn’t say,” I responded.

Part of their merriment also stemmed from the fact that Max and Eamon spoke sufficient Dutch. We had no idea what they were plotting next. Plus, little Eamon—Max’s henchman—had curly light brown hair and bewildering blue eyes suggesting to me that even as a young lad he just captured your queen— and checkmate loomed in one more move.

I’d guess one of Max’s first words was baseball. As a three-year-old, he pronounced it “baysh-all.” At his behest, we played wiffle ball from the time he could hold a bat slightly upright until he grew older. He collected Ozzie Smith, Vince Coleman, and Willie McGee baseball cards. I gave him my Billy Swift, Robby Thompson, and Matt Williams cards. When I did have children, I’d hoped they would grow as fond of the game as Max did. I also hoped they’d bring the same happy and sometimes mischievous light to any room they entered.

After Karen and I caught our breath at home on the couch, twenty minutes after the maritime adventure, Max asked to head outside so he could swing the bat. By the time the kid’s visit ended, I wanted to kick my brother in the ass for dropping them off with the bat and ball—baseball be damned for one summer afternoon.

On his third attempt to hit Karen’s underhand knuckleball, the backswing of the yellow plastic tube caught me in the cojones while I stood behind home plate. Max and Eamon cackled with delight as I writhed in pain on the ground.

“Should we take them to your parents?” Karen asked.

“Get them in the car,” I said. Mike and Lorraine pulled up as I limped from the backyard to the front sidewalk.

∞

Lorraine’s family threw big parties when these four Tracys came home from Kapellen, Belgium, where Mike and Lorraine relocated after years in Amsterdam. The Buttons own a heating oil and propane business in Mountaintop, about ten minutes south of Wilkes-Barre.

Kate Button, Lorraine’s mom, lives at the family homestead, a white Cape Cod with a large front yard, perfect for wiffle ball. I see Kate as one of the people who epitomizes Tolstoy’s view of pure happiness and good: to live in the service of others. She’d do anything for us. For you. Or anyone else. 

When that wiffle ball game got called on account of darkness, Max and I were the last two players left on the makeshift ballfield. We sat on the damp grass, watching beads on the blades blink from dewdrops to petrified pinpoints of mercury under the dusky silver sky, lighting up to the west in intermittent flashes over silhouetted trees striving for the heavens— oaks, maples, and evergreens pulsing with fireflies. He leaned his head against my shoulder, and I mussed his straight, fair hair.

“Is that heat lightning, Uncle Thom?”

“People call it that. But it’s just a distant storm.”

“Maybe we should go in the house.”

“It’s really far away, Max. It can’t hurt us.”

“It can’t hurt us?” Max said. “Ah, good.”

Max had asthma and a severe allergy to dairy products. Since birth, he spent considerable time in hospitals when bouts of pneumonia struck, or he accidentally ingested even a hint of milk or cheese.

We all spent New Year’s Eve in the joint during one holiday visit from Mike and Lorraine. Inside the hospital, two family friends and Geisinger caregivers—Kathy and Mark— provided love and affection for Max like he was their own. No one batted an eye at a bit of champagne in Dixie cups. I think our hospital staffer friends even shared a small sip with us. You celebrate while you can. 

Public food servers or kitchen staff, in some cases, didn’t take his allergy seriously enough. In October 1993, Max died in my brother’s arms after a reaction to food eaten in a Brussels restaurant. His mom, Lorraine, passed away after a similar allergic reaction eleven months earlier during a trip to Paris. Max, at age 10 and dressed in a St. Louis Cardinals jersey, merged souls with his wonderful mom who I’m certain never left him in the first place.