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By Root 508 0

and rocked to sleep, whom we have tickled and have gone swimming with and have taken to countless movies, whose heads we held while they threw up or brows we wiped when they had fevers, whom we read to and taught to ride bikes, whom we scolded and fussed at, who made us laugh at ourselves, whose greeting of “Hi, Dad” is enough to erase our every care and lighten our day, whose every smile makes us remember their first smile as clearly as if it were yesterday, whom we would walk through fire for, whom we have stayed awake worrying over long after they drifted off to sleep. Still do.

Diane and I have offered that same kind of parenting to other young people as well. Our home has always been something of a magnet. Given the number of children who have lived with us or have been central to our family over the years—sometimes we affectionately call them “the strays”—it is no small wonder that Diane feels we have rarely been alone. It’s hardly surprising, though; it’s how we both were raised. We have gotten as much out of it as we have given.

Not long after we were married and still living in Brooklyn, a friend from Massachusetts called to ask if her son, a budding dancer with the Boston Ballet School, could spend the summer with us while he studied with the School of American Ballet in New York. Of course we said yes, and Alex Brady arrived, all of fourteen or fifteen years old, trim and athletic, carrying a small duffel bag of belongings and a box of Cheerios. That summer turned into nearly three years as Alex’s talent was recognized and SAB begged to keep him on and develop him. He went on to dance with the Miami Ballet and Twyla Tharp, but while he was with us, we were both learning how to live with a teenage boy. He was adventurous and wanted to explore the city and make friends. We tried to strike a balance between giving him room to experiment and keeping the eye on him that his parents expected. The call to come for him at the emergency room at St. Luke’s Hospital was our worst nightmare. He had been stuck in the eye accidentally by the wooden sword of one of his friends during a medieval festival in Central Park. We arrived at the hospital to find a collection of his buddies dressed as serfs and knights sitting uncomfortably and conspicuously in the waiting room. Fortunately, it was a minor injury, and Alex recovered quickly.

My cousin Renae, Uncle Sonny’s daughter, came to live with us for a while in Brooklyn, too, after the last of her immediate family passed away. She was not prepared for moving into the world of working adults. Diane took her shopping at Lord & Taylor for a suit for job interviews, something without sequins or her midriff showing. We practiced mock interviews and helped her write a résumé, and with her common sense and genuine warmth, she landed a job quickly. But when Diane came home from work one day to find her sitting in our front parlor with a guy she had just met on the subway, Diane had a firm talk with her about the proper way to introduce a new friend to the house: over Sunday supper, thank you very much, when we were both at home to greet him. Renae is now back in Chicago, married and raising a son of her own.

Soon after we moved to Milton in 1989, when Katherine was an infant, we became the host family for a Milton Academy freshman on scholarship from the South Bronx. Doug Chavez was an ABC student just as I had been nearly twenty years earlier, just as eager and earnest and just as clueless. Thin and small, he was carrying the bravado that he had used as protection at home, hoping it would do the same for him now. It all felt so familiar to me. Our responsibility was to befriend him, have him to supper a few times, and be a resource to answer questions if he needed us. We had a regular early supper on Sundays for our family and all comers. Doug came once and, in many ways, never left. He brought with him his rich Colombian-American heritage, his complicated family history, his hip-hop dance steps, his aspirations, and his friends whenever we invited him for Sunday supper or a family