Brotherly Love

There are several people I look up to for inspiration.  This is dedicated to my brother Joel who defied all odds, letting nothing stop him, in the face of all adversity.  

The day I flew to Atlanta, Joel flew to Nashville so he could spend Christmas with his in-laws in Nashville, TN.  His wife joined him a day later, held back by a last minute appointment.  It was supposed to be a simple Christmas, full of food and love and laughter.  It was.  But his plans to return soon changed.  A blizzard of untold proportions blanketed his home of New York City.  The city that never sleeps somehow had stalled and was suffocating under white fluffiness.  No one could make it back to New York; not even the New York Giants.  Just a few hundred miles north, Tom Brady couldn't even lead his Patriots, one of the best teams in history when playing in snow, on a drive back to New England.  But I have to make it back on Wednesday! he thought.  Stoic, he called his airline, looking for alternate routes.  Thursday was the first available flight and that was not acceptable.  Skipping meals and even bypassing regular email checks, he called every airline and every agent at every airline to find some way, any way, to get him to Manhattan.  I have to make it back by Wednesday!  After an exhaustive search and further depletion of funds, he found the answer in the city of brotherly love; he would fly from Nashville to Philadelphia.  But it was an early flight Wednesday morning.  As his in-laws live nearly an hour from the airport, he hatched a new plan.  The night before his flight from Nashville, he relocated to a dilapidated hotel on the outskirts of the airport perimeter, risking personal hygiene and safety.  He awoke, fought through airport security, willingly subjecting to the TSA's grope-and-feel policy, and boarded his flight.  Phase One, he told me.  Led by his street smarts, he thought ahead and booked an Amtrak ticket, later bypassing millions of other passengers with the same plan, but were an idea too slow, for a train that would take him from Philly to Manhattan, and get him back by Wednesday afternoon.  Phase Two.  I assumed his wife was with him.  No, he abandoned her in Nashville.  That's how driven he was.  I suggested a roast beef sandwich with sharp provolone and spinach at Tommy DiNic's in Reading Terminal Market.  He declined.  He was a man on a mission.  At approximately 3:30 PM, Joel successfully emerged from Penn Station.  In Penn Station! he confided in a text.  But it's not over yet, he thought.  He met up with a friend, on a similar agenda of critical importance, whose journey began in Washington DC.  They met at Penn Station and without hesitation rushed to his office in Midtown Manhattan.  They deposited their luggage so they could finally complete their task.  And they did.  No one stopped them.  No wives, brothers, or friends.  No supernatural weather conditions could outwit their dazzling display of endurance and improvisation.  At the mercy of public transportation, they prevailed.  They made it to Madison Square Garden.  They would see Prince perform after all.