Steroids stabilized for a few months, but the inflammation gradually returned and worsened as winter wore on. By the beginning of spring, commutes were uncomfortable again and making it to school by nine o’clock for first period became difficult. “Senioritis going around,” said Dr. Benson with an eye roll when I walked in half an hour late. Thankfully, once seniors have been accepted to a college, as I had by a liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, their final semester grades don’t matter. I saw the thick envelope amongst the mail as I rushed in the door, home from school, on my way to the bathroom. I broke the good news to my family over dinner of pork chops and applesauce that reminded me of my grandmother’s cooking.

           In the name of the father, the mother, the sister and the brother. Throughout my childhood we traveled to western Pennsylvania to visit grandparents who lived in a small trailer stale with the smell of stray cat shelter and the sounds of TV western marathons, but sitting on acres of mowed lawn which I ran around for hours chasing a baseball that I hit as hard as I could, “two outs, bottom of the ninth,” throwing the ball up and two hand slamming it as far as I could. When I got bored of that, I  would try to coax my sister and father outside to come out and play soccer. The field had a perimeter of sycamore and spruce through which a small silver stream ran, which my sister and I would follow to the musty old barn that my grandparents had tended when they were younger and kept horses of whom the only vestige was their old shoes which my sister and I collected and showed to the adults, but then mom said we shouldn’t handle them because they could give us tetanus. The once grand industrial but now rusting history of Pennsylvania impressed itself with the help of my father’s childhood stories of muscle car masculinity and dwindling family fortune. Unsalvageable Thunderbirds and Mustangs littered lawns leading into downtowns with dilapidated mini-mansions and boarded windows on the freemason lodge and above the Dollar General, where there were traces of prewar architecture that dad would point out. “This was millionaires row,” old Victorian houses needing a new coat of paint, “at one point, Ridgway had the most millionaires per capita of any town in the U.S. because of the lumber industry in the early 1900s,” he said, pointing to the wooded ridges around. “What happened?” I asked. “Well, they cut all of the old growth forests down, and then didn’t have any left. When I was a kid, all of the surrounding hills were clear cut. There were other economic factors at play I suppose, small town America hasn’t faired well in the past 50 years. I knew I had to get out of here.”  Stark contrast to New York City where gentrification claimed another two blocks every summer along my walks to high school through the Lower East Side. As freshmen, Josh, Tom, and I would sometimes get jumped or harassed, but by senior year we had no such problem. My father, just ahead of the zeitgeist, moved to New York City looking for success where it was budding in the early 1980s.

           “There are plenty of good colleges in the city, you know,” said mom. The safer choice, close to my doctors, home-cooked meals, cheapest if I go to a city school and live at home, but that would just be a continuation of high school, take the subway to class every day and then go home at night, a bunch of my friends will still be around. It would be better to be in a familiar setting if my stomach is acting unfamiliar. The steroids could maybe get me through a semester, but I need to do eight semesters and the doctor said he can’t prescribe them continually because of the possible side effects. Stopping my education after high school wouldn’t be acceptable to my parents, and I wouldn’t mind taking a few English and History courses anyway, might even be able to pass the requisite STEM classes if I was healthy—a dorm room and a soccer team full of friends, authority figures are the professors who are happy as long as you show up, write some stuff and participate, only tasks necessary for independence.

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