For some of you, including my wife, the subject of this posting will either be very bizarre or very annoying (or both as the case may be). Normally I usually talk about something related to Boy At The Window, not the “Boy In The Iceberg,” the original episode of my now favorite animation series of all-time, Avatar: The Last Airbender. Despite all of the strangeness over the ending of the series between Nickelodeon and its creators, it’s final four-part episode, “Sozin’s Comet,” aired Saturday evening. I must admit, I found myself tearing up on several occasions. It wasn’t all it could’ve been, but it was mostly a fitting end to a great series.

I know, I know, based on my background, I guess I should’ve been more upset about the series end of HBO’s The Wire, but I wasn’t. I saw more of myself in the characters of Avatar than in any other series I’ve ever watched. From the goofiness of Sokka to the cosmic spiral concerns of Aang, from the Kim Possible-ness of Suki to the need for redemption of Zuko, and from the utter evilness of Fire Lord Ozai to the complex nature of Iroh, I saw myself and many of my key influences in the characters throughout the show’s three-year run. I saw a bit of my first crush in Suki, Toph and especially Katara. I saw more of my second crush in Azula and Ty Lee. My AP American History teacher was a combination of King Bumi and Iroh. I saw myself in Aang and Zuko and Hakoda, especially in the third season. Surviving the things I survived and succeeding even to the extent that I did made me appreciate the complexities imbued into all of the characters. I even felt sorry for Azula as the series wore on from season two to season three.

As those of you who have read my postings on the end of the Disney series Kim Possible last fall already know, I’m a sucker for epic stories of turning possible annihilation into ultimate victory. Stories that illuminate struggle, redemption and renewal, unrequited love, succeeding against long odds, reluctant leadership coming from unusual people, and a deep sense of commitment to a vision and understanding of one’s self in the process. Avatar has done all that for me and more. It’s enabled me to form a deeper bond with my son Noah, to understand more why I react to certain things (like the love story of Aang and Katara, for instance) the way I have, and to rediscover my interests in Eastern philosophies and views of the world.

Not that the show is completely engulfed in the Dalai Lama or Tai Qi. It also presents women who kick ass and assert themselves — a very attractive quality, I might add. It shows young people who assume adult responsibilities while struggling with every important issue that any human being can face, including their own identity. It also shows a world in turmoil, on the verge of tearing itself apart, all in the name of spreading an ideology, an identity, that others are either forced to accept or get run over by in the process.

For those of us who are Christians, Jesus ultimately plays the role of Avatar. But in the end, it is each of us who has a responsibility of restoring balance to the world, to our world. That hopefully will be the role that the next president will take on. In a sense, the way many folks around the world see presidential hopeful Barack Obama is the way that many characters in Avatar saw Aang — as providing hope for a future worth living at a time when so much is out of balance. While Obama certainly isn’t the “last airbender” or isn’t likely to “glow it up” in the Avatar state, he does need to be the bridge over a number of divides in our world in order to fulfill his promise in restoring balance in our world and in America’s place in it.

Perhaps the only things for me to resolve as a result of my love affair with Avatar is both my immediate future and my distant past. I must resolve to keep striving for Boy At The Window’s publication while not allowing everything I have written about my past to define my present and future. I also must acknowledge my regrets, one of which includes never having given myself the chance to reveal my love and affection to my first crush. I must also take joy out of those things that do work out, including my marriage and with my son. I hope that he finds his Katara one day in a way that I couldn’t until I met his mother. In any case, I can’t wait until he’s older and can appreciate the series even more than he does now.

This week my father Jimme turns sixty-eight. That sentence is weird for me. My father Jimme, who I really didn’t get to know as a sober, recovering alcoholic until he was fifty-eight, just as I turned twenty-nine. The fact that he’s still alive and doing really well, all things considered, as he enters his late sixties. That we have any relationship at all is a miracle, and it confirms the old adage that is the title of today’s blog post.

Based on interviews for Boy At The Window, my own recollections and the stories told to me by Jimme and my mother growing up, my father’s alcohol likely started the year he moved to New York City (1962) and ended in ’98. From the Cuban Missile Crisis to Monicagate is but one way to look at it. Why so long? Why in New York City, likely the worst place to become an alcoholic?

My father’s grew up as the youngest of eight or 10 (I forget which at the moment) children in rural central Georgia in the 1940s and 1950s. He learned a lot about hard work and perseverance. Unfortunately, his formal education ended with the seventh or eighth grade, not uncommon in the Jim Crow era of segregation and exclusion. He was smart, which made him weird. He was shy, which made him vulnerable. And, not so coincidentally, his voice and diction made him sound Southern, which made him someone who likely should’ve never moved to the big city.

By the time my mother met Jimme in the late ’60s, my dad worked as a janitor for the Federal Reserve Bank in lower Manhattan making nearly $300 a week. It was good money for many people in ’69, and for a Black man with only a middle-school education, it was the American Dream. A dream so good that it was too good to stay true. He eventually lost that job because of his addiction, as well as numerous others. By the time my mother filed for divorce (’76), he worked as a janitor at Salesian High School in New Rochelle. The divorce process left Jimme wounded in many ways, and sent him deeper into alcoholism than I could’ve imagined at the time. Salesian fired him as well.

In the ’80s, Jimme worked as a janitor, a carpet-cleaning, wood-varnishing technician who for Glen and Bruce, the Levi brothers. Their offices were on West 64th and East 59th, near Jimme’s Manhattan bars. It was a job that he could show up drunk to. It was a job that he’d have for nearly twenty years (only to end when the FBI arrested one of the brothers for attempting to hire a hit man to take out one of their competitors; I’m sure that this is a story that’s stranger than fiction).

Among many things that I remember about my father between ’79 and ’97 was how vulgar his language would become once he sniffed alcohol, much less drank it. In finding him at bars or hanging out near liquor stores or on street corners as a tweener and teenager, he used a number of stock phrases that I could’ve easily made into a comedy routine.

Most of what Jimme talked about was money, drinking, his drinking buddies, and occasionally, women. But after he had his “pep-up,” which is what he called his Miller Beer, he started mouthing off like someone tried to pick a fight with him. “I’m a big shot, mudderfucka. I make fitty-million dollas a week. Look a’ dis po’ass mudderfucka. That mudderfucka cain’t do shit for me.” If anyone dared question his analysis of himself and his situation, Jimme would take it to another level, he’d say, “Muddafucka, you ain’ got shit nobody want. I buy an’ sell muddafuckas around here. I kick yo’ muddafucka ass.” Or “I’m da boss of da bosses. No one tell me what ta do!” The ultimate in Jimme’s mind was to say, “I make fitty-million dollas a week . . . I make eighteen thousin’ dollas an’ hour . . .” and with a wicked laugh, say “My name’s JC—Jesus Christ!” to end his expletive-filled tirade.

Despite this, despite his idiotic attempts to make a “man” out of me by paying for a prostitute to celebrate my seventeenth birthday or repeatedly calling me “faggat” because I had gone another week without getting “my dict wet,” there was a silver lining. Me and my brother Darren saw so much of New York because of being around our father and working for him in the ’80s. Whatever else could be said about Jimme, he did come through for us most of the time when we needed money during our welfare years (’83-’87). Of course, I had to hunt him down every Friday at a watering hole between East 241st in the Bronx and West 23rd in Manhattan for nearly five years to get it.

Thankfully, college, graduate school and working for a living ended this aspect of our relationship. It took another decade of drinking binges and fights and the loss of his one-room apartment and job for Jimme to fully hit rockbottom. Homeless and penniless, his brothers and sisters in Georgia convinced him to finally give up the excitement of New York and the pretense that he was a big shot in the city that never sleeps.

Every time he visits New York these days, my father is always amazed by how he lucked out. Most of his drinking buddies are long dead or are well on the way to a grave. He knows it’s only by the grace of God that he’s still here and still doing well. And he loves to remind me–and himself also– “If I can change, anyone can.” Happy birthday, dad!

Ever so often a person comes into my life who has the ability to influence my world view, my view of myself and my way of relating to the world. These people are like comets, in that they hang around for a season and then leave, usually returning once or twice (if I’m lucky) over the course of my life (at least to this point). This week, one person comes to mind. She’s the one person who helped me begin my healing and growth process in the aftermath of my obsession with my second crush. She helped me renew my faith in love and romance, not to mention my faith in myself. All while going through her own hard times at home and with her significant other.

Lately in all of my busyness around my job search, publishing efforts, teaching at Princeton and in general, not to mention my family responsibilities, I tend to naturally look at my decisions and how they may or may not have led to my current situation. One of underemployment, of being halfway through ’08 with no offers from agents, editors or employers (at least full-time ones, anyway), of realizing that the past decade of nonprofit management work has hardly helped me as a writer, professor or administrator.