Free Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox Page A

father I have the merest glint of remembrance—walking along a sidewalk with a thin, pleasant older man who held my hand—but I was three when he died. I was eleven now, and Nana's death was my first experience of loss. For a period of time afterwards—days? weeks? a month?—a door would open and I'd flush with the irrational expectation that Nana might walk in, or I'd daydream of going to see her in her apartment. The worst were the times I'd believe, for an instant, I did see her, at Woolworth's, or through the window of a passing bus. I would catch myself and simply feel sad.
    In time, I absorbed the loss of Nana. I finished elementary school and prepared for junior high. My parents secured an economic foothold in the civilian world and began shopping for the first home of our own. Life moved on.
    Over the years to come, though, Nana continued to figure in my life. I knew, in a general sense, that she thought I was a great kid; that she loved me and understood me better than any other adult in my world. I didn't, however, grasp the extent to which she'd been my protector, my bridge to the world of other adults, including my father. And even after Nana was gone, her belief in me held sway. Her conviction that I was somehow different, that special consideration was in order, became a posthumous gift, an emotional trust fund of which my parents were the dutiful, if sometimes dubious, executors.
    ONE HAND CLAPPING
    Nana wasn't the only one with a rock-solid belief that I was destined for a bright future. About this she and I were in complete accord. As a child I didn't define success in monetary or material terms, but I would tell my mom and dad that one day I'd buy them each a new car and a big house for us all to live in. They'd smile and shake their heads. Sometimes this wide-eyed hubris was not so charming. When Mom would tidy my room after endless demands that I do so myself, she'd ask, “You don't think someone's going to be doing this for you for the rest of your life, do you?” “Well, actually . . . yeah . . . I mean, I'll pay them for doing it.” In my mind I was just being honest. So I'd be genuinely confused when she'd take her dusting rag in both hands and look as though she wanted to wrap it around my skinny neck.
    How did I plan to achieve this life of leisure? Like most Canadian kids, I played hockey with religious devotion, and hockey represented our only realistic shot at fame and fortune. Being small, I regularly got my ass kicked (more than two dozen stitches in my face by the time I was a teenager and countless broken teeth). Still, I threw myself into the game. Realistically, the odds that I would be the next Bobby Orr (Wayne Gretzky was still a snot-nosed kid himself) were slim to none, but I could still dream.
    Maybe my belief in myself sprang from a recognition that many things seemed to come easily to me. School was a snap, especially writing; that's what seemed to get the grown-ups (like Nana) the most excited. Even at five and six, I was writing long, multistanza, epic poems about my adventures, real and imagined, and later moved on to short stories, essays, and book reports that won praise.
    But I had other passions too. When I was preschool age, my dad would return from his trips bearing gifts for all the kids; mine were often big picture books. Dad would later recount with amazement that I'd read a book, cover to cover, then find paper and pencil and, without tracing, replicate page after page of drawings in meticulous detail. This was the beginning of a lifelong love of cartooning, including caricatures that occasionally delighted but more often offended my friends and family.
    Music was another obsession. I had to be one of very few eight-year-olds who got excited when Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood got together to form the supergroup Blind Faith. I bugged my parents for a guitar and one Christmas I found a shiny Fender knock-off, complete with amplifier, under