Stan

I was jealous of his easy sociability, his ability to maneuver 7th grade, his status -- not quite popular but conversant with the popular kids. He was, in every sense of the words, friendly and extraverted, by appearance a different soul than me.
As I’ve gotten to know Stan through the years, he’s struck me more and more as a Zen student. Riding the waves of good times and difficult blows, he celebrates and grieves but always remains true to his guiding principle, kindness.
My jealousy dropped the first time I spoke with him in history class the last day of 7th grade. He talked with a familiarity that wrapped me in his warmth and humor. It was just one conversation (in which he recounted a horror story he had read), but I knew I wanted to be friends with him.
At a football game the next autumn, we got to talk for a second time. For some reason, I broke the ice by throwing him down the hill from where the bleachers looked over our junior high school’s cleat-munched football field. I think that was some kind of initiation for Stan, and it was an expression of the rage that hovered below my frozen façade, come to the surface now that, in his presence, I felt totally myself. Call it an exaggerated “male-bonding” experience, Stan still remembers that incident and recalls it with laughter and some puzzlement.
I loved going over his house in South Euclid (the city just west of Lyndhurst). There was love there, in a way that may have been absent from my house. His parents were easy-going and they loved each other truly and devotedly.
If Stan was a Zen student, his father, Herb, was the guru on top of the mountain. Soft-spoken behind his green-tinted glasses (he had injured his eye in World War II), when I came over he treated me like a second son. His gentle wisdom and ironic laugh were soothing.
My friendship with Stan introduced me to emotional intimacy in which I could share anything -- my dreams and my failings. For the first time, I was accepted and respected as an intelligent kid, as he was, instead of made fun of for it. The relationship went a long way toward healing the loss of “home”, the disengagement with “Self” I had experienced all of my life due to being given up by my mother.