"Bat" men

There are several things you expect, tolerate and/or delight in when it comes to living in a downtown loft.
A large bat swooping nervously throughout your space is not one of them. I was wearing a nightgown, feet tucked under me on the couch in what I thought was the wind-down of a long day when Charlie (the master of understament) pointed toward the alcove and said "there's a bird in the apartment."
The wide-winged rodent chose that moment to soar into the living room and prove Charlie spectacularly wrong. It dove and climbed like a fighter-pilot engaged. One cat and I went for cover, Lily and Charlie sat stunned and bemused, but Little Bit, the polydactyl skinny black cat, sprung into action.
If we had a flying rat cast as the Red Baron, Bit was clearly ready to put species issues aside and play Snoopy.
It hardly seemed like the time to remind him he was declawed.
Charlie ran downstairs to tell the doorman about our uninvited aerialist, while I watched the battle from under an afghan. I put Lilly in the crate where she looked at me gratefully as if to say " Bird dog, yes. Bat dog, no."
Bit was literally running sideways off the walls as he tracked and stalked his increasingly agitated quarry. The thought of rabies crossed through my mind, but realistically how could a scrawny cat without claws catch an aerodynamically spectacular bat in flight?
Bit demonstrated by leaping a clear four feet into the air and catching a wing on descent, bringing the bat to the floor. As it scrambled to get back in the air, I decided it was time for Bit and the other domesticated beasts to join me in the laundry room.
By now Charlie had returned with Jim-the-doorman, a personablle retiree used to dealing with pests like teenage girls who wanted to know which apartment the Bills quarterback lived in - Jim was not ready for the Red Baron.
He called maintenance on his cell, ducking and hollering as the bat continued its eratic circles. No one he called knew what to do, as Bit paced the laundry room and threw himself against the door as if to say "let me at him. I have thumbs. I can do this."
When Jim finally went back downstairs for further executive consultation, Charlie took matters in his own hands. With Lily and the cats with me in the laundry room ,he opened our apartment door to the hallway and shooed the swooping beast into the common area.
Charlie then went back downstairs to let Jim know the bat was no longer our problem. It was his problem.
But, being a guy, when we heard the elevator chime signalling Jim's return to the floor Charlie went out in the hall to help. Bit was now in full pout.
After five minutes of shouts and erratic bangs against the wall , Charlie came back to announce they had locked it in 308 - a vacant apartment down the hall where the door had been left open for maintenance. The bat now had about 2,200 sqaure feet and one of the better views in the city all to itself.
We were more than an hour into this adventure and I was quite ready for it to be over... but guys just aren't like that.
Jim returned with a specially dispensed maintenance worker - they had buckets, rakes and brooms and they were going in. The yelling and erratic wall pounding continued into the evening until a flushed, but happy, Jim the doorman knocked on our door. "We got it," he said breathlessly, pointing to a covered bucket.
The hall was littered with the tools of the pursuit. Bit stayed at the other end of the apartment with a look of pure disdain -- the amateurs were clearly unworthy of his opponent.
Charlie, Jim and the Maintenance Guy were worn out from their ragged pursuit, but Bit sat serenely on the window ledge scanning the night sky. Until we meet again.

A "good" family

There are folks who ask immediately "who" you are - and actually mean ask what your grandparents have accomplished of public note and whether you grew up at the right address and attended the appropriate private school.
By that pedigree, I am a certified mutt. My parents and grandparents pushed open the door for me to go to college with strong, broad shoulders.
When I was in high school, I wouldn't have known how to get to the "right schools" by bus line. Almost 30 years after high school graduation, I am still amazed to discover that the location of that singularly unspectacular event still matters to some people.
My father shares the first and last name of a noted hematologist of no relation. At civic and social affairs, those with the need to enquire as to my maiden name immediately assume that's my bloodline. After all, I AM talking to THEM in THEIR space. I MUST be one of them.
Nope, I say. My Dad was a State Trooper, then served as a town judge in Pembroke for more than 30 years.
"So he was a lawyer," they smile. "No, a cop. Town Judges are elected and don't need to be degreed."
The conversation frequently ends there. Often abruptly.
This type of exchange infrequently occured in the rarified air of Sea Island where blueblood and blue blazers were the order of the day. Over the years of working in Five Star/ Five Diamond luxury, I learned that the more legitimate the pedigree, the less my lack of the same mattered.
Although they had lineage with a capital L and the assets of several countries combined, the family that owned the resort defined class as an attitude - a way of respecting yourself and treating others - not simply a lucky sperm club.
Thus running into this wall in Buffalo - the city of no illusions - is sometimes startling. I didn't come back home for that "society" -- but my brothers, my cousins and their children.
I surveyed much of our motley mob at a family graduation party last week. Gorgeous children squealing and splashing in the pool, fluid clusters of loud conversation, my father - now the patriarch - slowly moving from table to table chatting up the "kids" - many who now have their own grandchildren.
Our generation, and our children, are now of the professional class. We could "pass" in most any circumstance. But we enjoy each other completely and laugh heartily.
We bring too much food and put as much as we can in "the envelope" because our grandparents taught us to care for our own.
When Charlie started working on our cottage porch, relatives with tools and equipment appeared without an email or ask. Boats, barbeques and other plans could wait until the structure was framed.
The families of the "workers" gathered lawn chairs and coolers in an impromptu party around the raised wood frame tableau of power tools and sweat. There was a rough poetry in watching them improve on the sturdy bulding my grandfather built before I was born.
Grandma would have been proud to see "the kids" together in that way and would have said it. Grandpa wouldn't have said a thing, but would take silent note of the solid, careful construction. That was their legacy.
For too many years, Bernie, Craig and I - stairstep cousins each nine months apart - lived in three different states. In last decade, each of us faced a serious health threat. And each of us has done our best to be there for the other despite the geography.
Bernie and Craig are guys' guys - prone to embarassing humor and absurdly manly pursuits.
But every time we say goodbye to each other we hug and "I love yous" are always exchanged.
I know very few folks who can imagine being that rich.
Am I from a "good family?"
Absolutely, the best.