Andy and I went to Wesleyan together.  Senior year, we lived in a house together along with Kevin, Jada, David, and Sam.  Andy and I had adjacent bedrooms with a thin wall between, and easy views into one another's rooms from the hallway.  Three of my favorite Andy memories are from that year.  

#1.   I'm a bit of an incorrigible neat freak, and Andy was, as you may know, not.  I must have made some strongly worded suggestions to Andy about the state of his bedroom, and my opinions about his floor, which was covered in clothing.  Andy decided to appease me.  I no longer remember exactly how the moment happened, but I came to Andy's door and saw that his clothes were apparently climbing the walls - he had pinned up all the clothes from the floor, to ridiculous and hilarious effect.

#2.   Drag parties were routine at Wesleyan.  Dressing Andy up for them was by far the highlight, for me.  That silky hair!  Smooth skin!  And he looked a million times better in my dresses than I ever did.  He was a vision in trashy glamour...

#3.  This memory is embarrassing, but I can't bear not sharing it.  Remember the thin wall I mentioned?  Well, at one point Andy let me know that he could hear EVERYTHING that went on in my bedroom, and that if he was going to have to hear me, he was going to feel free to join in my noise making.  Sure enough, the next time I was having - ahem - a night in with my boyfriend, at a key moment I suddenly heard Andy through the wall, dramatically exclaiming, "Oh yes!!!!!! Yesss!!!!"  I think I laughed for hours.  

Despite the fact that Andy and I both moved around a lot in the 18 years since we graduated, we somehow stayed in touch and I saw him pretty much every year.  I always looked forward to the times when Andy and I would visit.  He was that ideal presence: the loving witness.  He would share a flattering anecdote if I was feeling down about myself, laugh at my dating dramas, somehow diffuse my stress with his inimitable Andy humor.  His advice the first time I found myself needing to hire people: "if you see a sliver of crazy when you're interviewing, there's an iceberg of crazy waiting for you".  

The last time I saw Andy was last summer, 2016.  I was home with my 10 month old daughter, who Andy was just meeting.  He asked me what my experience of parenthood was like, and I told him, "I knew I was going to be exhausted, but that somehow it was supposed to be wonderful.  What I didn't expect was how overwhelming the wonderfulness would be, and how much it would outweigh the exhaustion."  He said, "I feel the same way about teaching."  This is perhaps my favorite memory of Andy, showing the immensity of his love for his students.  Is there anything more valuable to a community than teachers who teach and nurture their students with that profound a love?  I can only hope that someday my daughter will have teachers like Andy.

There is no filling the empty space where Andy was.  I will continue to miss him with love, and to remember him as he usually was: barefoot and smiling, listening and adventuring, sunshine embodied.

Oh Andy, I just wish there could be more of you. 

I didn’t know Andy for an especially long time. We worked together as English teachers at Plymouth North High School in Massachusetts for a couple of years. The first day I met Andy was actually when I was at Plymouth North for a job interview (he had been there for a year already). After school was over for the day, the principal took me to the faculty room and introduced me to some of the younger faculty members. When Andy realized that my name was Andy too, while he was shaking my hand, he insisted that I would have to be called something else. He even suggested another name (I’ve forgotten the name. It might have been Steve). I was a little put off by his bravado and couldn’t laugh nearly as hard as some of the other teachers in the room who knew him better. This was my first experience with Andy’s goofy and brazen sense of humor. I came to appreciate it and looked forward to it everyday during the school year. Some years later, someone reminded him that the first thing he did when he met me was try to change my name. We all had a good laugh. He apologized to me. It’s uncommon to find someone who can be unabashedly funny while also being heartfelt and understanding simultaneously. Andy did it all the time.

There is much to say about someone who smiles as easily and often as Andy, but I would like to try to characterize his most common gesture. Andy’s smile is like a joke has been made at your expense, but he somehow makes it at his expense too, and subverts the derision into joy. It’s like he has just gotten away with something insanely clever. And maybe he did. It’s like he knew something you didn’t. Maybe he did. 

I met Andy in the first days after arriving at Wesleyan in 1995.  We connected then and there in that unique time, starting college, sharing a dorm, discovering people who grew up in different places, getting our bearings as old boys.  We became fast friends. Of course one of the most remarkable things about him, I came to appreciate more and more over the years, was how quickly he made everyone around him feel at ease immediately; like the first steps toward friendship had already been taken.  He was always so deeply comfortable in his own skin, confident in his deep easiness and joy for life. He made it so easy to feel at home around him, at home in your own skin too. 

Over four years in college together I would see and experience many grand things at his side. He taught me about bringing a playfulness to every moment. About not taking things too seriously. About loyalty. About how to feel comfortable in solitude. About non-attachment. About going the distance for a friend, or a kid, or just because. In Nicolson he taught me about early roots rock out of Studio One. One random weeknight in Butterfield he and I sat alone toasting something, and he helped me discover that I prefer Jim over Jack. In New York he showed me the meaning of physical grace, watching him cut through the streets at night on his rollerblades (shorts and tee shirt, boundless), or on the trampoline. In Nice, he taught me how to talk to a stranger, unhindered by language difference or nationality. He taught me that one everywhere really: from Paris to Florence to Provincetown. He taught me that beating him in Gin Rummy was frustratingly difficult. He taught me, as so many others I’m sure over the years, about Whitman, and Garcia Marquez, and Heller, and Irving and Goldman.  He taught me how to tell a great story about all the magical weirdness of the people we meet. 

 I'll never understand how he did it really. Mixing that settled, earnest, honesty, with that effervescent, silly, playfulness. And behind it all, this COURAGE. Such a quiet and grand courage. I was always in awe of the ways that fear didn't seem to manipulate him like so many of us. He just acted. Strode right into the room, or into the water, or into a new friendship. I'll never forget the way that courage informed his love and generosity with others. I think it was the foundation. It's like he looked at every situation with the attitude that life is too much fun and too precious NOT to jump right in. To just GO. To Israel. To Hawaii. To the court. To the ocean. To the air off the tramp. 

 I'll always remember his easy saunter. Comfortable, wide and back on his heels, barefoot as much as possible. That point. You really felt the love when he did it with both hands. With that smile that always said "loosen up a little" and "I SEE you" and maybe even a little “as you wish.”  I will eternally cherish that we named our son Westley because of Andy.

So for him I hope we all remember to read The Princess Bride out loud to each other once in a while.  And a Song of Myself. Because his life was full of that stuff of Whitman’s fire. The way we know the glorious fun of being alive, through well written words, and drinking up the sun laying in some leaves of grass somewhere with our shoes off. For him I hope we all remember that the boldness and glory of this life is in the striding unafraid into the field, or ocean wave, or into a good joke, or into the arms of a friend. Because he lived that boldness of heart everyday of his life and we are all of us better off for it.  

I will always be laying in the sun with you at Pisa my dear friend. Ready to laugh. 

One hand washes the other

David