Roll Call

Carry is not quite five when we abandon her at Skagway.

We don't leave her intentionally, of course. Nevertheless, she refuses to forgive us. Our youngest sister has always been a drama queen but recently has developed an unattractive tendency toward nursing a grudge . It's because of the day she crawls up the kitchen cabinets to claim the peanut butter and nearly plummets to her death.

Clowning in the backyard in Grand Island.

"My God! My God!" she screams one afternoon as we lounge lazily in the tv room after school. Mom strictly forbids us to take the Lord's name in vain. Carry, however, in spite of her not-quite-five-years, can barely form a sentence without invoking the name of the Almighty. She's picked up the habit watching Mom's soap operas and uses it to startling effect. On this particular afternoon, however, we roll our eyes and pay no attention. But Carry refuses to be ignored.

It's probably a good thing we eventually respond. After maneuvering herself up the kitchen cabinets, Carry loses her tenuous grip and falls but is saved when her underwear fortunately hooks to the nob of the silverware drawer and suspends her in mid-air.

We double over and cry laughing, but nobody makes a move to disentangle her.

"My God, why don't you help me!" she thrashes her arms and legs in the air and shrieks at an earsplitting pitch.

The incident is still fresh a few days later when we drive off and leave her at Skagway. Carry is left with the peculiar notion that we don't seem to care much for her.

In our defense, we're still trying to get the hang of our new routine in Grand Island. Back in Denver, we walk everywhere. School and church are less than a hundred yards away. Shop Rite Grocer is five blocks away. There is almost never a reason to drive anywhere. Everything changes, however, when we move to Grand Island. Living outside the city limits requires us to inhabit the old brown station wagon for a good chunk of the day.

Because we own only one vehicle, all of us must accompany Mom to Skagway every Monday after school to endure the weekly shopping expedition. Skagway is a small town wonder. We've never seen anything even close to it. Shining like a gleaming jewel at the five points intersection in north Grand Island, Skagway sells groceries, shoes, clothes, fishing poles, chewing tobacco, Christmas trees, bowling balls and even ice cream cones. You can mail your letters at the handy post office or drop off your film at the convenient photo center. It's not uncommon to see farmers in overalls lounging in the friendly aisles of Skagway to discuss center pivots or the latest Husker victory. Skagway is the place to be.

"Stay together!" Mom orders as we march like a small parade into the store. She eventually sends some of us off, though, to collect grocery items. The boys grab six gallons of milk, all that our refrigerator will hold. I'm responsible for gathering five packs of toilet paper, and Deb carts our infant brother Jeff around so that Mom has more room in the cart. The process should work like a well oiled machine.

The trouble is Carry. Easily distracted, our youngest sister is an inveterate people watcher. She's fascinated by farmers and their easy, laughing banter. She stares with complete absorption at the stock boys who fill shelves with laundry detergents. Teenagers who cluster together in the snack bar leaning their heads close together capture her riveted attention. Carry wonders about all of them.  Her attention is so focused that she forgets to follow Mom and the rest of us. Oblivious, we make our slow way around the store until at last we crowd into the checkout aisle together as Mom pays for groceries. Somehow, we find room in the car for all of us and 14 bags of groceries which we hoist onto our laps and stuff into every available corner of the station wagon. In all the confusion, nobody notices that Carry is MIA.

At home we help Mom put away the mountains of groceries and settle down to start our homework. Mom sits down to read the paper before busying herself with the task of preparing dinner. She calls Carry to put away her crayons.

"Where IS she?" Mom wonders when Carry fails to respond. We shrug over our homework barely listening. In a few minutes, however, Mom is panic stricken.

Carry and Terri

"When was the last time anybody saw Mary Caroline?" she demands. We stare at each other. "Think!" Mom slams her hand on the table.

It's not long before we realize we have forgotten to bring Carry home from Skagway. Mom grows pale. Without a word, she grabs her purse and races to the car. Mary and Terri run after her and jump into the station wagon just as it screeches out of the driveway.

Meanwhile, Skagway is having its own problems. Carry is not only an abandoned child but also an extremely difficult one. Refusing comfort of any kind, she screams bloody murder and demands to know where her mother is. Rattled employees attempt to seduce her with candy of every assortment in an effort to obtain information, but Carry rejects the sweets piled next to her.

"I want my mom!" she wails.

At last, a teenage checker who goes to school with my brothers Joe, Mick and Rick observes the family resemblance. "I think I know who she belongs to," she offers.

At the very moment Skagway calls home, Mom is rushing to them. She skids into the store with Mary and Terri in her wake and immediately hears her youngest daughter's piercing screams from the rear of the store. Less than a minute later, Carry is gathered close in Mom's arms.

"Why didn't you help me?" she sobs. Mary and Terri, safe in the knowledge that Carry is alive and well, dive straight for the pile of candy and stuff it hastily in their pockets. The woman who has been dealing with a screaming little girl for the last 90 minutes, however, is not remotely sympathetic.

"I fail to understand why it takes an hour and a half to notice a child is missing," she glares accusingly at Mom.

All at once, Mom is exhausted. She apologizes profusely and thanks the store employees but makes no attempt to offer explanations. What can she say? "I have ten kids and didn't know I lost one" seems a weak excuse at best.

Carry - age 4

We all feel terrible. Mom cuddles Carry in the tv room recliner all evening.

"My God, my God," Carry moans in agony. She's milking it all right, but Mom doesn't scold her once. Overcome by my own terrible guilt, I try to apologize to my little sister.

"I brought you some ice cream, Carry!" I hold the bowl enticingly close to her. Briefly she raises her head to glare at me with eyes full of daggers.

"My God," she hisses. "Get out."

Then she nestles her head against Mom, resumes her moaning, and behaves as if the rest of us cease to exist.

When Dad arrives home from work, Mom gently explains the events of the afternoon and evening. Furious, Dad lectures all of us for a good 20 minutes.

"And from now on," he concludes with a roar, "we're taking roll call every time we get in that damn station wagon!"

We do, too. That's how we discover a few weeks later, just as we're backing out of the driveway to go to church, that our three-year-old brother Tommy is missing. Mom rushes back into the house and discovers him asleep under the coffee table.

Still half asleep and whimpering, Tommy is safely deposited into the crack of the station wagon to sit, knees touching, with Carry. She rakes him up and down with a gaze of smug superiority.

"My God," she rolls her eyes in disgust. "What a baby."

And who can blame her? After all, she survived abandonment by her entire family for an hour and a half at Skagway - Grand Island's Only One Stop Shopping Place.

Grand Island

I hate Grand Island, Nebraska.

I hate cornfields. I hate our modern ranch style house with its modern windows and modern treeless front yard. I hate my own room with its cozy privacy. Back on Eudora Street, my sisters and I sleep together. Now I am alone in a little corner of the basement, and my parents think I will be over the moon to have a room to myself.

Everything about Grand Island is foreign. As soon as we arrive after the long trip from Denver, Dad drives downtown. Red explodes in every shop window.  Signs scream to passersby.

 "Support our 1971 Huskers!" "RED Hot Deals!"  I have never seen so much red in my life. It's all very quaint. Very midwestern.

 I hate it.

Mostly, though, I hate Central Catholic High School. Mom drops Joe, Mick and me off in the circle drive, and we nervously meet the superintendent, Father Frank Hoelck, in his office.

"It's great to meet the Brown kids!" Father Hoelck smiles broadly. He is tall and handsome, probably too handsome to be a priest. After he arranges for classmates to escort us through the building our first day, my brothers march stoically off.  I am waiting outside the office for my own tour guide feeling queasy with fear when a short man with iron gray hair saunters out of a nearby classroom.

The odd little man - Mr. Northup 

"VOLAAARE!" he croons like Frank Sinatra and waltzes up to me. For one wild second, I think he will ask me to dance. He laughs when he sees my startled expression. "Hee hee!" And it really is "hee hee". Gripping my arm, he looks all the way up at me. I am six foot one. He is five feet five. "How are you, young lady?" he greets me in a strong Rhode Island accent. Then he disappears into the office.

I blink. That odd little man is like my own crazy father. All of a sudden, things don't feel quite so strange.

Mrs. Peg Ley, typing teacher

My first period class is typing. I am a few weeks behind and wonder how I will ever catch up. The typing teacher, however, Mrs. Ley, reassures me in an instant. "We're so glad you're here." Mrs. Ley is beautiful like my mother. She places a comforting hand on my shoulder and smiles with her lovely, kind eyes. "I'll help you catch up. Don't worry."

Mutely, I nod. I am afraid to speak in the wake of such sympathy for fear my voice will crack with emotion. Everyone is so kind. Even the bouncy little cheerleader in the hall who guides me toward the cafeteria. She seems to have springs in her feet. "It's just down the hall to the right," she beams. "Come to the pep rally Friday!"

Karen Pfeifer - the cheerleader

She throws the invitation over her shoulder before careening away down the hall. 

After lunch is chemistry with Mr. Kayl who, as it turns out, is also my advisor. I shyly introduce myself to him, and awkwardly - because he is just as shy as I am - he shakes my hand. How old is this guy, I wonder. Mr. Kayl appears to be a high school kid himself but apparently is old enough to be married to the elfin woman down the hall who teaches English. Mrs. Kayl is 4 ft. 10 but tries to elevate her stature by wearing six inch platform shoes. She treads with careful dignity down the hall so as not to fall off the side of her shoes.

At the end of a long, exhausting first day, Fr. Hoelck meets with me in his office.

"How'd it go?"

I shrug. "It went great." 

He searches my face with penetrating eyes. There's not much you can hide from this guy, I think. I stare down at my lap.

"Give it a chance," he says kindly. "You're missing everybody in Denver right not, but I promise we're not so bad. See how it feels in a couple of weeks or so."

That night in my own room all by myself, I open a letter from one of my best friends in Denver.

"We miss you!" she writes. Her letter is full of multiple exclamation points and all the news from Machebeuf High School. I suddenly toss the letter aside and cry my eyes out. It has not occurred to me until now that I won't be graduating with my old friends next year. Instead, I will march to Pomp and Circumstance with these strangers from Nebraska.

I cry and cry but finally sit up defiantly. Someday, when I am older, I will move back to Denver and into my old house. For now, however, I'm stuck in Hooterville.  I sigh longingly. If only it was possible to travel forward in time. If only it was 50 years from now, and I could be an ancient woman sitting on the front porch of the old house on Eudora Street remembering with fondness the brief stint I spent as a teenager in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Father Frank Hoelck

I cannot travel in time. Yet, the years pass so quickly that often I feel as if I have catapulted through time. 1971 seems but a brief, dizzying age ago.

It's not quite 50 years later. In fact, it's 45 years ago to the day that Joe, Mick and I first step foot into Grand Island Central Catholic. I think about that 16-year-old girl and wonder how she would react to seeing herself 45 years later - still in Grand Island, Nebraska. Still at Central Catholic High School.

Mr. Kayl

Father Hoelck is right.  Central Catholic's not such a bad place at all. It's so nice, in fact, that after graduating from college, I return to teach my own brothers and sisters and eventually their children.. I wonder how surprised that teenage girl would be to know that one day she meets a tall, funny, sarcastic fellow teacher who will become her husband? That she will give birth to two very tall boys who will also graduate from Central Catholic? 

Those lovely, kind people she meets that warm September day in 1971 will become lifelong friends. The Sinatra crooner, Fred Northup, is a second father and surrogate grandfather to her husband and sons. 

The bouncy cheerleader, Karen Pfeifer Robison, will also return to Central Catholic as Development Director and continue to be one of Central Catholic's most exuberant cheerleaders. She and I will share not only our friendship but an enchanting little girl called Maggie - Karen's granddaughter and my great-niece.

Father Frank Hoelck becomes a grandfatherly chaplain to another generation of Central Catholic students. A week before his death, I will visit him in his hospital room to hold his hand..  "Thank you so much," I weep, "for being so good to me when I was a kid."  Even in a fog of cancer, he will stare into my eyes with that same kindly, penetrating gaze.

My typing teacher, Mrs. Peg Ley, is one of my very closest friends. Even at 91, as I often remind her, she is still a beauty.

"You are so prejudiced!" she waves a hand at me. Only last weekend, she tells me her good son has decided to make all the decisions regarding her imminent future.

Mrs. Kayl

"That's good," I tease her. "You're too damn old to decide anything."  She laughs her glorious laugh. I am relieved that her faithful Bobby takes such tender care of his lovely widowed mother. But I also swallow with emotion. I do not care to live in a world without Peg Ley. She is too important to me and to so many others.

Pat and Julie Kayl are the best friends I will ever have in this life. Julie has always been the person I turn to for consolation, advice, gossip and a good laugh. Legally blind, she nevertheless continues to teach for many years and makes her slow cautious way down the hallway. Because I am more than a foot taller than she, I have to restrain myself from picking her up and carrying her down the hallway so that we can get there faster. She and Pat are retired now, but Pat is still fixing everything that breaks at Central Catholic and is the only one who knows for sure where the leak in the ceiling of the old gym is.

Not long ago my brother Rick, now a grandfather, reminisces about that fateful day 45 years ago. "It's funny how we all swore we'd move back to Denver," he shakes his head."We all came to love Grand Island so much. It's where we were meant to be."

None of us ever moved back to Denver. All of us live in Nebraska, and eight of us are still in Grand Island. In 1971, we are blissfully unaware of the events that will unfold in our family in the years just ahead, events that will change our lives forever. Because of those events, however, we become even closer through the years and vow never to be far apart.

"Family is everything," Dad tells us again and again as we grow up together. But he neglects to tell us that family includes not only the people we start with, but the people we grow close to along the way. As long as we're with people we love, we make a home.

We don't know it in 1971. But when we move to Grand Island, Nebraska, we're finally coming home.

Changes

My life is over.

I say as much to Mom and Dad. "You're ruining my life!"

It's the summer of 1971. I've just finished my sophomore year at Bishop Machebeuf High School, and Joe will be a freshman in the fall. We've gone all the way through school with the same friends and teachers, and I am beyond excited to be an upperclassman.

Tommy and Carry in the kitchen window at Eudora.

Then Dad tells us his company, Roberts Dairy, has transferred him. We're moving - not just to another house but to another state. Away from our beloved Eudora Street. Away from our school and our big family of aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins.

I cry for days.

Dad says we won't move until September. "Time enough to fix this old house and get it ready to sell," he informs us soberly.

Mom is as heartbroken as we are but tries to bolster us with false bravado. "It might be the best thing!"

She doesn't fool any of us. Mom's just given birth to her tenth baby, Jeffrey Joseph. We are five Mary's and five Joseph's now, and Mom wants her last baby to grow up on Eudora Street just like the rest of us. She wants to make dinner in the evenings while Carry and Tommy sit in the window between the kitchen and the breakfast room to keep her company. She wants all our stockings to hang together over the same mantle every Christmas. She wants us home.

A typical Christmas morning on Eudora

We never appreciate our old neighborhood as much as we do now. This last summer on Eudora Street, I attach a memory with everything I see. I remember the clubhouse in the garage, the bedroom closet where Duchess gives birth to a litter of puppies. At Mass one Sunday, I remember the day Joe, Mick and I hide behind the stone pillar by the church steps to spy on Rick and Debbie.

Rick and Debbie are eight and six years old. On a breathless day in June, when we're all dying to go for a swim, I tell our gullible little brother and sister that the nuns frolic in their own private pool in the backyard of the convent. Joe and Mick play right along.

"They take off everything and jump right in. It's nice for them," Mick adds thoughtfully.

Joe and I nearly lose it. The thought of our good Sisters shedding long black habits and veils to leap into a pool is almost too much. We convince Rick and Debbie that the nuns are only too generous and willing to share their pool with small children one afternoon a week, and glory to God, this is the very afternoon. If Rick and Debbie walk the half block to the convent, ring the old-fashioned doorbell that turns like a key, and politely ask permission to swim alongside the nuns, they can enjoy two hours of uninterrupted swim time.

Delightedly, we witness the entire exchange from front row seats behind the church pillar. When Rick and Debbie, hopping up and down in their swim suits, ask a stern but bewildered Sister Rose Edward to swim with her in her backyard pool, Joe and Mick and I laugh so hard we roll down the stairs in a gasping heap. Rick and Debbie storm furiously past us on their humiliating journey home.

"Dummy Stupid Brats!" Debbie hisses. It's the very worst thing she can think to say.

But now I sigh. No more practical jokes to pull on Eudora Street.

Easter at Aunt Margie and Uncle Jack's

Just three blocks down Montview Boulevard is Aunt Margie and Uncle Jack's house where we spend every Christmas Eve and Easter. Our second cousins, the Ryans and Tighes and Sperros, are like brothers and sisters. And another six blocks after that is our beloved City Park. In the winters, when we're little, Dad hurls us in our saucer sleds down the big hill in front of the Museum of Natural History. We ice skate on the big frozen lake  in winter and paddle boat with our Starbuck cousins on warm July afternoons. One Independence Day, our four-year-old sister Carry steps right into the lake and disappears. My cousin David and I immediately reach down to frantically search for invisible arms and yank her out. Carry is sputtering and furious.

"My God, my God!" she wails in agony. Already a drama queen, Carry frequently invokes the Lord's name much to Mom's dismay. Nevertheless, it's a close call, and Carry's shrieking irreverence fills us with relief.

On Eudora Street with Terri and the Starbuck cousins - Sean, Matt, Les
and Joel.

All summer, we clean and paint and repair until the shabby house on Eudora Street is pristine and perfect. It hardly seems like the same house.

The summer passes too quickly, though. Moving vans arrive on September 14th. Our friends are already in school, and my brothers and sisters and I feel disconnected and forgotten. Life moves forward without a backward glance at the Brown family. Somehow, we expect a school wide mourning period - maybe flags at half mast.

When all the furniture is packed and gone, we say goodbye to the old house. Every room echoes with emptiness, and we all become emotional. Even Dad ducks his head and impatiently blows his nose.

Our only consolation is that we spend the night with the Starbucks who generously invite us to stay in their huge house before we leave early the next morning. We play tag football in the big front yard with our cousins and almost forget that anything will ever be any different.

Before dawn, however, Dad rouses us. On the morning of September 15th, our last morning in Denver, it snows. We have no time to marvel at softly floating flakes in September, though. Dad wants us on the road. We say our hasty, heartfelt goodbyes to the Starbucks. My cousin Leslie and I hug each other long and hard and promise to write. Then we tumble into the old brown station wagon for the longest road trip we have taken together thus far. Even for an all day trip, Carry and Tommy are forced to sit in the crack.

All the way down Montview Boulevard on our way out of town, we shiver. Our shorts and tee shirts are meant for a warm September day, and all our winter clothes are packed in a moving van. Outside, the world is dark and snowy. Nobody is awake in the whole world, it seems, except us. Our mindless chatter fills the old station wagon. As we approach our neighborhood, however, we lapse into silence. Passing Forest Street, we remember our fallen school mate Joey Campbell. On the other side of Montview, our schools and the church are dark and lonely in the predawn morning. In a few hours the early autumn snow will have disappeared. Kids all over the neighborhood will troop to school. A new morning will come to life under bright sunshine, and school bells will ring in the start of a busy day. But the Browns will be long gone.

Finally, craning our necks to stare down a dark Eudora Street, we send silent goodbyes to our beloved old house. To our sweet Duchess buried forever in the good earth of the backyard filled so recently with our noise and games. To all our neighbors and friends sleeping peacefully in their warm beds. To the best neighborhood ten kids could ever grow up in.

2051 Eudora Street

Nobody says anything for a long time. When we are just past City Park and on our way out of town, Tommy breaks the silence.

"Guess I have to poop."

We laugh in a kind of relief. Whatever happens next, we're together. And just like that, we're talking and shoving and joking, grateful for each other.

In the gray light of a rising sun, we head east on Interstate 76 to a place we've never even seen much less heard of - to an exotic, foreign, frighteningly unfamiliar place.

To Grand Island, Nebraska.

Two Weeks in March

Joey Campbell is the nicest boy in the neighborhood.

A junior at Bishop Machebeuf High School, Joey is a year ahead of me. As soon as we all graduate from grade school, we simply cut across Elm Street to Machebeuf.

Our little neighborhood is really a small community in the middle of big bustling Denver, and Joey is everybody's favorite. Park Hill Public is right down the street from our Blessed Sacrament Elementary. The three neighborhood churches - Blessed Sacrament, Park Hill United Methodist and Montview Presbyterian - are a stone's throw from each other. Whether we are Catholic, Protestant or Jewish, we grow up playing with each other, and Joey Campbell is our unofficial leader.

The Campbells are a big Catholic family like us. Their home on Forest Street, just three blocks over from Eudora, boasts a trampoline in the backyard. Joey organizes neighborhood games, many of which revolve around the tramp. And there's always a baseball game. Joey loves baseball and plays for Machebeuf's team. All the Cambells are sweet-natured kids with mega-watt miles, and their tolerant mother doesn't mind the scores of kids who flood her backyard every day after school.

"Joey, don't play too rough with those young kids!" she yells out her kitchen window.

But Joey never plays rough.

I am attending my brother's eighth grade basketball game on a Sunday evening in early March. On my way to get a drink at halftime, I see Joey standing by a bunch of kids. Our eyes meet, and we smile. I would never remember such an innocuous little greeting except that I will remember it later as Joey's last night on Earth. The next day, Monday, March 8th, Joey leaves us forever.

My own brother Joe is practicing with his basketball team in the old Blessed Sacrament gym when Machebeuf's baseball boys stream in to warm up in a corner. Joe turns when he hears a commotion. It's Joey Campbell. He collapses to the floor in the middle of his baseball teammates. The coach and another adult try to revive him, but Joey will not survive. We learn the next day that Joey Campbell, the nicest boy we know, has died of a heart attack. He is 17-years-old.

The neighborhood is devastated. At Joey's funeral, I see Joey's older sisters, their faces contorted in grief and bewilderment. I ache for them. And I ache for myself. What if something ever happened to MY brother Joe? The two of us fight like there's no tomorrow, and sometimes I detest him with every fiber of my being. The thought, however, of losing him terrifies me. I turn to look at him at the end of our pew at Blessed Sacrament Church. He doesn't fixate on the Campbell family like I do but instead studies with focused concentration the back of the head of the man in front of him. He's trying not to cry. I know this because I know my brother.

But Joe doesn't cry - not for a while. He holds tight to his grief and to the terrible image of Joey Campbell's collapse in the gym. One day a week or so later, he grabs a sandwich in the kitchen.

My brother Joe, 1971

"Joe," Mom says softly as she stands at the stove. Joe moves silently away from her. Mom grabs him. "Talk to me, Joe."

He attempts to wrestle away. "I'm fine, Mom," he chokes. All at once, though, he surrenders the battle and leans against Mom to cry his heart out.

"It's all right," she murmurs and rocks him back and forth. "Everything will be all right."

Nothing, though, is all right. For a week, everybody walks around like zombies. We have a special Mass at school for Joey, and kids break down in the hallway to cry.

After school, I take long walks with Duchess and yearn for spring to arrive with reassuring flowers and restoring warmth. But Duchess, our sweet dog, is failing. More and more frequently we cut our walks short, and sometimes I have to hoist her little bulk into my arms to carry her the last few blocks home.

I am nearly 16 and hardly remember a time Duchess hasn't been with us. My little brothers and sisters have never known life without her. But Duchess is getting old.

She sleeps at the foot of my bed and sometimes, in winter, likes to burrow under the sheets all the way to the end of the bed. I worry that she will suffocate, but all through the night, I hear her soft whiffling and know she's slumbering peacefully. Now, however, she is so arthritic and heavy that she can't propel herself up the stairs. So every night we spread a blanket at the bottom of the staircase. She obediently steps into the middle, and either Joe and I or Mom and Dad carry her up.

In her younger years, Duchess makes friends in the neighborhood. She spends countless hours with her old boyfriend Hubert. When we call her home, she gleefully comes yapping and running to us on her tiny legs, long ears flying. We joke that she resembles a sleek little black seal and even barks like one. Lately, however, she is too content to crawl on the sofa and curl up to sleep behind Mom's back.

On a Tuesday night, two weeks after Joey Campbell's death, Duchess dies peacefully in her sleep at the end of my bed. We discover her still little body just as we are all ready to go to bed ourselves.

It's ten o'clock at night, but Dad and my brothers dig a grave for Duchess in Mom's little garden in our backyard. They lower her into the ground, and Mom and I cry softly. The little kids shiver against the cold March night.

Our little Duchess, 1971

Dad stands upright. He is still healing from two sprained ankles and steadies himself with a shovel. "Let's say a little prayer for Duchess," he says.

We huddle together in the darkness as Dad says some words over our beloved little dog. I look up at a starry sky and think of Joey Campbell, and for the first time in my life I wonder seriously about Heaven. Wherever it is, I feel sure Joey is there. I can see his big smile and the way he lights up when his little sister Susie perfects a back flip on the trampoline. I think of the way he crouches close to the ground on the baseball field, the intensity of his gaze beneath the brim of his cap.

I hope Joey Campbell is supremely and completely healthy and happy.

And wherever Heaven is, I hope tonight there's room for one little black dachshund who barks like a seal. I almost see her, ears flapping, running with all her tiny might to find the familiar sweet boy with a mega-watt smile.

To find Joey.