I didn’t know how to observe the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center this morning, and the idea of listening to bagpipes and speeches filled me with ennui. Maybe it’s being half-Irish but the whole “Never forget” impulse, no matter what your religion or the wrongs done to you in another’s name, makes me want to run from history screaming. As if from a burning building…

But the good I remember from that time was the sense of communion you got from New Yorkers that had nothing to do with politics or religion, certainly not at first. I remember hearing that there weren’t enough mourners to attend the masses of all the firemen and other first responders who died that day, and Giuliani and the fire chief asked if people could attend services for people they didn’t know. I went to one for a fireman at a small Catholic church at Pacific and Flatbush, a church I had not not been in before or since — I’m not even Catholic — crying with a few other strangers.

And I remember going to the Barnes and Noble on Court Street in the following weeks and visiting the shelves that had once held the books on the Middle East and Islam and finding them empty, cleaned out by people trying to understand. Before we as a nation went back to sleep. (Or as my favorite Irish writer said, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”)

And I remember the actual day of 9.11, wearing a suit because I was attending a hearing for Adam who had not been diagnosed with Aspergers yet but who could not be mainstreamed in public schools, and the city didn’t have special schools that worked with kids with learning difficulties and emotional problems, so you had to threaten to sue them to get them to pay for private schools. We were thrown out of the tall building next to the Marriott where the NY Dept of Education held its hearings, my lawyer complaining that we should have gone ahead with things anyway (unaware of the body count, the full horror of what had happened) and the silent baleful looks those who knew more gave him in the elevator.

And I remember going past my daughter’s school, where the then new head was literally running around in front of the building uncertain whether to send the kids home. (They didn’t at first, and then they did.) And I remember walking up the hill to Fort Greene, seeing the first people coming back from walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, their hair filled with ash. And I remember seeing one man with ash on his shoulders fall to his knees on DeKalb, across from the park, overcome no doubt by the memories of what he had seen.

Another couple stood not far from him and only watched as I did — all of frozen for a moment in fear and confusion, uncertain how to respond to another in pain. And then the man got up and moved on but the fact I did not even say a word or reach out a hand right then haunted me for a long time afterwards, and does now.

I offer you this wafer of a memory, flavored with the salt of my tears.

Adam turns 27 today. Thinking back to our conversation at Chava’s I remember him saying, “I thought cancer was supposed to be this big life-changing event. And instead everything still feels the same.”

I told him how much I liked what he said after this meditation class we went to the last time I was here. It’s a regular Monday night group that meets at the SF Zen Center, and it’s really for people in recovery. (I knew that going in but didn’t tell him, though I don’t think drugs and alcohol are his problem now, just further impediments.) The fellow who ran the group gave a good introduction to the Buddhist precepts, kind of Zen 101, and then invited the (very crowded) room to introduce themselves, saying what their affliction/affiliation was as they went.

Being SF, almost everyone was more than one thing – “Hi, I’m Joe and I’m alcoholic, addict, Al-Anon member etc.” and by the time it got to Adam, who was literally the last person in the circle, sitting by the door, he said, “Adam, stand-up comic.” I could see people looking at each other – do you need a recovery group for that? Can I get in on that?

Later that evening I told him I thought that was funny and he said, “Yeah, but I thought about it and wish I’d said, ‘Adam, Aspergers, cancer-survivor and stand-up comic.”

That’s the key, I think: Identifying with the people who survive, the ones who are still here, who look at each other with some sort of recognition. If nothing else, being in close quarters with him for the last week has convinced me he is not self destructive, that he is not headed down the dark path my father took.

He is fascinated with Dad’s story, at times; he even said something to the oncologist about how my father killed himself because of his cancer diagnosis. No, I told him later: he killed himself because he was a miserable person who compounded his fear and hatred of other people with alcohol and isolation, crippling, near-total isolation.

One night while I was here I awoke and remembered sharply, as if in a dream, a trip I took to see Dad and Marion in Mackey, Idaho. I wasn’t 30 – Bonnie and I weren’t married (though she was with me on the trip) and Dad and I were friendly enough to have got invited to Idaho, where he and Marion had bought a bar in the god-forsaken little cattle town of Mackey, 30 miles from Nowhere.

Except when we arrived at the airport in Pocatello and called them, Marion answered and was very alarmed to hear we were there. This wasn’t a good time, she said – health concerns, your father had a “little stroke.” But after some whining on my part she told us to come on over.

It was a weird weekend. I remember despite Dad having had a “stroke” (of which there was no physical evidence) he was up at seven am, chopping wood outside our window. I think they were both wishing we would go away, and one afternoon Bon and I went into the moonscape hills outside of town and took mushrooms. I remember driving back and through a herd of cattle, a cowboy on a motorcycle waving us through.

Sitting in the bar that night I saw Dad behind the bar, not a position he was not born to. He didn’t like most people, and his customers were few and sullen. (I remember one old cowboy asking me what I did in San Francisco, and when I told him I worked in a bookstore he looked at me like I’d said I molested small children.)

We left, finally, the next day. Dad took us to the airport and remember a testy time in the airport lounge, waiting for the plane. B said something about how, for being a writer, I never spent much time actually writing, and I remember flipping her the bird. My father was shocked – gentlemen did not do that to ladies, I guess. “Why don’t you have a drink?” he said. “That might cheer you up.”

And look how well that worked for him!

But why was I remembering all this now, in vibrant color and detail? I think because I understood, all these years later, that he had not had a stroke at all but had made an attempt on his life, or was certainly headed that way. “I’m in the slough of despond,” was the most he ever said about it, and Marion was under strict orders to not speak of such matters. But I think, in old-fashioned terms, he was having a nervous breakdown: He had left his job teaching, sold his house, sunk what money had into running a business he was completely unprepared for in a town that didn’t want him in a land that looked like a bombing field. And he didn’t see any way out.

Adam and I are starting to think he may have dodged a bullet or two with his chemo; aside from some nausea and tiredness throughout the week, the worst of the side effects seem to have missed him. So much so that when I returned from Sprit Rock, where I went for a daylong retreat with Jack Kornfield, he asked me to pick him up at his apartment. He’d gone there to get his running shoes, planning on getting in a jog in this neighborhood, not far from where he lived at the Hotel Mirabelle for a spell.

He seemed okay when I got him, smelled a bit of cigarettes (so smart when getting over cancer) but nothing more. Said he had seen a friend of his who wanted Adam to be in a band he was forming to play bass. Except neither of them had a bass guitar.

We went to dinner at Chava’s for old times sake (I was jonesing for a burrito from San Jose Tacqueria across the street but he wanted more variety in his offerings, I think; he probably eats lots of burritos on my dime). Chava’s hasn’t changed much – same Diego Rivera knock-offs, same fine fare (though my portion of chilequiles seemed smaller than I remembered it). While waiting for our food I asked him how he was feeling in general with a birthday around the corner.

“Okay, I guess,” he said, “though I wish I had a job and a girlfriend.” Points taken. I talked a little about my hopes for the Diablo center in Danville, that they might help with direction toward getting adults with Aspergers meaningful work. Or work they could handle, depending where on the spectrum they were. And the girlfriend, well, I told him being in a band was a time-tested way to meet chicks. Being able to actually play the bass was not even a prerequisite.

I asked if he had been in touch with any of these Aspy groups, Geek to Geek etc. and if he’d been to any of their functions. “Yeah, and they’re pretty depressing: A bunch of people sitting around talking about how annoying normal people are. And they all have Aspergers so there’s not a lot of social interaction. Mostly people stare at their hands.”

But after a day of fretting about him and his prospects it was nice to hear a somewhat realistic appraisal of his situation, or that his concerns mirrored mine. The retreat at Spirit Rock (where the road sign entering says “Yield to the Present”) was filled with sitting and walking meditations, broken up by Jack’s often profound and funny dharma talks. During the first walking exercise, when he sent the more experienced practitioners out to do walking meditation before the newbies, I found myself headed up a hill, leaving all the others in the parking lot and grounds around the meditation hall where we’d been.

I passed a few people on the rise, each doing that zombie walk, as if looking for a lost contact lens. I was more purposeful, while trying to be mindful, climbing up the dusty trail, lizards scattering in my wake, summer sun above and sea breeze and a hint of fog below, smell of eucalyptus and Manzanita bushes. I was so alone I thought either I was a genius or I was doing this completely wrong – which is how I feel about half the time.

When I got to the top of the hill I finally saw another walker, but I think she was from the weekend retreat that was happening there and she paid me no mind. The trail seemed to run off over the hills to Eureka and I couldn’t tell from the crest of the hill if there was a loop back to the center. I didn’t want to go all the down in the wrong direction and find out there wasn’t and I dithered at first, going halfway down and then up again, thinking of invisible people laughing at me, until I took the plunge, headed off down the hill – and of course found a trail heading back to the center, one I couldn’t see from the top of the hill.

And I cried. Put my hands over my face and cried for maybe thirty seconds, realizing (of course) that this was how I felt about Adam – I have no idea if I will find a path that is right for him, but I did. “Trust in the uncertainty,” Jack said later that day. I’m gonna work on that.