My son, our son…

My son, our son, Brendan, who for almost three years had been in New Orleans, doing what he, by himself, could do to help those he can to recover from Katrina, is now in Haiti.

Keep in mind that when he went to New Orleans, this parent’s advice was pretty much limited to, “Watch your ass.”

“Yeah, Pops,” I think he, hardly convincingly, told me then.

And then there was that bullet.

That bullet.

Shattering the drywall, only inches above my son’s head in the shower, while my son, my loved son, himself showered.

And, then, more bullets.

In rooms below.

In the very same apartment. From somewhere in the street. From somewhere in the street that might have, could have, killed my son.

My good, my loved, my second son.

And now Haiti.

“Watch your ass,” I tell him again on the phone.

“Ten days, Pops. Ten days, I’m off to Haiti,” he tells me.

This, the reckless son.

He, as a boy, given to barreling full-speed down a Vermont dirt-road hill on a bike, his mother holding her breath behind him, his father never knowing until years later.

He, who, as a kid, saw an electrified fence and saw an opportunity for a charge, even if it meant putting his stream of pee in the line of fire.

He, who showed up for his college graduation road-rashed—chin, legs, arms—after doing a handlebar-sault racing, pre-grad, post-alcohol, to a bar.

And now Haiti…