One of the earliest memories I have of my father comforting me was when Blue died. Blue was my pet rabbit.

I must have been six or seven that year, the year my biggest wish came true and I became the proud owner of two baby rabbits. I don't even know how my father knew I wanted a rabbit--maybe he didn't--but I came home from school one afternoon to find the two little bunnies hopping about in a tiny brown cardboard box. I was ecstatic.

I spent much of my after-school hours with them over the next couple days, bringing with me lettuce and carrots and cabbage and whatever I thought rabbits loved. They, in turn, always seemed to appreciate it, hopping about contentedly as rabbits do, going about their rabbit business, noses and whiskers twitching in unison. They were as pleased as rabbits could be.

In my mind's eye, I see them blue and pink. Imperfect details so often and so easily cloud childhood memories, and I don't know why I so strongly believed they were the colours I thought--everyone now tells me they weren't--but I proceeded to name them accordingly. I named the boy rabbit Blue and the girl rabbit Pink.

And I loved them dearly.

One afternoon several days later, I came home from school, and, as routine would dictate, I tossed my satchel aside and headed immediately to check on Blue and Pink. I was surprised to see only Pink there, hopping about by herself over bits of soggy lettuce and looking all forlorn.

Blue had died.

I'm not sure how I found out the terrible news, but I have this somewhat faded mental image of my father showing him to me, the tiny body cupped delicately in his big brown hands, the soft fur all limp and lifeless, unbreathing. Blue looked so small in those big hands.

I remember managing to hold my composure long enough to walk out into the little garden out back. I didn't want anyone to know how upset I was. I headed towards the mango tree and the little set of swings there, its metal skin and layers of red paint just beginning to rust under the moist Caribbean air. I sat down, my back to the house, and began to cry.

I cried as quietly as I could, streams of salty tears running down my cheeks and onto the sandy brown shirt and khaki shorts that was my school uniform. I cried and cried and cried.

My father must have been watching from the house. He let me cry as much as I needed, and when he thought I had had enough time to myself, he walked over to me. I remember being surprised at the sudden presence behind me and the weight of the large hand that rested so gingerly on my shoulder. "It's okay," he said. And he squeezed my shoulder. That was all it took for the sobs to start up again, dry heaving sobs that left me gasping for air with every breath. "It's okay."

He patted my shoulder as I sobbed. "No need to cry so much, Patrick. It's just a rabbit." But I couldn't help it, the image of Blue's tiny body burned so recently into my mind. "You're going to run out of tears if you're not careful," he said. "If you're crying so much now, what'll happen when I die?" His words registered immediately and I stopped, terrified. He knelt down and put his arm around me. "When I die, are you going to be able to cry? You might run out of tears." I had stopped crying not at the thought that he might die someday, but rather that I might soon run out of tears. After all, he was my father, the strong, invincible man who knew how to make everything right. It was silly to think that he wasn't going to be around one day. He squeezed me one more time, and as he headed back indoors, I looked up, finally, into the deepening late afternoon skies. "Bye-bye, Blue," I whispered. I wiped my nose and followed my father into the house.

***

It's been twenty something or so odd years since that incident. Though some details are cloudy, I still remember it clearly for the tenderness my father expressed, and I think about it often enough, especially on days like today, the anniversary of his own death. True, it's easy to romanticize details and even entire stories, but we keep whatever good memories we have, whenever we can, however we can.

We all grow up one day, I suppose. Some things that you believe as a child turn out to be not so true after all. Like the two things I thought that day, for example. That my father would never die, and that I would one day run out of tears. Now, more than a decade after his death, I've long accepted his mortality.

And the tears, though not for long-forgotten childhood pets but for him, they still flow.

I miss you, Daddy.

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I was never read to as a child, English not being my parents' first language and all. So I missed out on the bedtime stories and nighttime readings I later came to believe was occurring across the world in every other home and every other family. After all, I had seen it in pictures: smiling mothers and doting fathers with oversized books, sleepy children in teddy bear pyjamas trying desperately to stay awake until the end of the chapter. "And they lived happily ever after," the parents would say, timed just perfectly for little eyes to close.

I read to Greg last night as we lay in bed, nothing much, just a chapter from an anthology I'm reading. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, an alternative, I suppose, to the usual NPR lulling us to sleep. Strange, how soothing it is to read to someone what effectively was a bedtime story.

I've always wanted to know what it felt like to have someone read to me, but this was just as good--if not better, being the reader instead of the one being read to. I read slowly and softly into the still night air, everything around us quiet as we journeyed towards midnight. Greg sighed and smiled at me as the story ended.

Thanks, hon, for indulging me.

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The elevator door opened with a pleasant bing! and a weary face peered cautiously out as I headed down to the lobby to pick up my dinner. The cleaning lady looked at me. "This floor, fourteen?" she said, her Eastern European accent rolling beautifully off her tongue like thick molasses.

"No," I said as politely as I could. "It's seventeen."

She looked at her feet and waved absentmindedly at the gremlins in the air. "Crazy day, I tell you. Crazy day."

It's Monday, I wanted to say. Tell me about it.

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As the minutes ticked by, I glanced around nervously, waiting for someone to come up to me. You're on the wrong train, they'd say. Or: This is for reserved passengers only. Or perhaps at best: You're on the right train but the fare for ticketless passengers is a thousand dollars.

I'd have paid it, too, I was so flustered.

Instead, I sat silent, fearful that an escaping breath would lift my cloak of invisibility and I would be discovered, ticketless.

We spent the day in Beltsville, Maryland, where Greg's brother, Jeff graduated Special Agent at the Secret Service training center there. At the end of the day, Greg dropped me off at the Wilmington train station, where I noticed the flashing yellow light that departure was imminent. I had barely enough time to collect my wits about me and run onto the Amtrak train northbound. Ticketless.

So there I was, sitting in my seat and watching the minutes tick by, the conductor nowhere in sight as the train made stop after stop. A few stations later, I had even become a bit cocky, daring in my mind the conductors to demand my ticket at any moment. Instead, they walked by without a word, asking others for their tickets and not as much as throwing a glance my way. It was as though I didn't exist.

Some two and a half hours later, the train pulled into Penn Station, and I disembarked, scratching my head at my good fortune. I had ridden the entire trip without a ticket.

What's this nonsense now about no free rides?

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In case anyone was wondering, the answer is Yes, I am procrastinating.

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Five years of togetherness in the gay world is like a thousand years in the straight world, so I've been told. And while a thousand years is perhaps closer to hyperbole than my sources would readily admit, there is certainly more than a modicum of truth in there given the statistical evidence around us. But even when I think of how long Greg and I have been together, our tenure is put to shame by my German cousin, Alex, and his Swiss partner, Bruno, who will be celebrating their fifteenth later this month.

Their fifteenth year.

Alex and Bruno visited us this weekend on their way home from a week vacation in Puerto Rico. It's been some twenty years since I'd last seen Alex, when I was a little boy in Trinidad gawking in awe at the strange language and funny accent of the crazy grinning teenager visiting from a land so far away. He would hold me down and tickle me, I remember, and I would run screaming about the house, hiding for hours in the little nooks and crannies I knew so well lest I be tickled to death. We've both grown up a bit since then, Alex and I, and have since come out to each other as gay men with wonderful partners to share in our lives.

Alex and Bruno are on their way to JFK now to catch their four o'clock flight back to Frankfurt. Safe flight home, guys. It's been a wonderful few days catching up with what's been happening in the past two decades.

Oh, and here's to fifteen years of togetherness!

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People sometimes ask us when we met, Greg and I, and how long we've been together. When we realized that we were going to stick around for a while, we put our heads together and did some creative calendar arithmetic to figure out the day we first met. (It was the day after I..., and before you..., but right after..., and definitely way before..., so certainly it must be...) We decided that October fourth would be as good a day as any.

Happy anniversary, hon. It's been a wonderful five years with you.

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I was walking to the subway this morning, bracing against the early autumn chill, when I noticed what looked like a tiny spill of some sort on the ground ahead of me. I approached, stepping gingerly around what I realized was a small broken egg, its precious contents trickling silently onto the cold pavement.

I paused mid-step, and looked up. From a crude nest high up in the steel rafters, a pigeon peered down at me, her soft gray feathers ruffling gently in the morning air, her eyes bright and watching carefully my every move.

I'm sorry, sir, she seemed to say, I'm so terribly sorry.

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