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expectantly for our personal audience with Dan. It was usually short, but it was always satisfying and often exhilarating. He was unlike any other adult we had ever met—puckish and serious at the same time, irreverent but reverential, and so creative. He would describe catfish pizza and other strange delicacies. He took us to the Big Apple Circus, to Central Park, to the zoo. He made us feel so special.
    For my eighth birthday, my mom and dad gave me a fabric-covered book. Inside were a dozen poems Uncle Dan wrote for me when I was born. My mom had lettered them in her own careful, beautiful script and pasted in pictures of me. The rest of the pages were left blank for my own writing. On the inside cover, my parents wrote: “We don’t expect you to understand all of them yet, but you can begin to read and grow with them.” When Uncle Dan sent them to my parents in April 1974, he included a note that read in part: “I send these with trepidation. They are uneven; but then so is life, no?” I have no way of judging whether they are uneven or not. I was not an English major. They are heavy-duty poems, however, full of big words that no eight-year-old would know: “deprivations,” “beatific,” “quisling,” “hieroglyphics”…you get the idea. There are even some made-up words like “supramundane” and allusions to Blake, Dante, and the Bible. I have not delved deep into the Daniel Berrigan, SJ canon. It would take some time—there are dozens of books with great titles like Testimony: The Word Made Fresh , No Bars to Manhood, Steadfastness of the Saints, Ten Commandments for the Long Haul, Love, Love at The End . But I marvel at his craft and his command of language, written and spoken. He is wry and principled, insightful and informal, but never one-dimensional. I don’t know all the pivotal dates and important moments in his long career as a poet, peace activist, and priest, but I love being his niece. I love the intimacy of the familial relationship with just a touch of formality that would not be present in a father-daughter bond. I have always had a close and special relationship with the man who gave me poetry for my very first birthday.
    These days, Uncle Dan is staying at the Jesuit residence at Fordham University in the Bronx. He walks a little more slowly, speaks a little more quietly, but he is no less integrated into the work of peace and justice. It takes us three trains and three hours to get from Connecticut to the Bronx, but it is a trek I enjoy making every month or so. I love catching up with my uncle. I also love how happy Seamus makes all the elderly Jesuits. During lunch, Seamus usually wanders the dining hall holding two metal spoons, pausing to wave and giggle and chat. The men, Jesuit priests in their eighties and nineties, are frail. Some are in wheelchairs and some walk with canes or walkers. They have no children or grandchildren of their own, and there aren’t many kids who visit the place regularly. So everyone knows Seamus’s name.
    There is something almost magical about watching your child fall in love with someone you loved and cherished as a child. It is as satisfying as adding to the circle of life by gracing your mother with a grandchild, but somehow more miraculous. You don’t choose who your child falls in love with. My son Seamus has fallen for his granduncle Dan hard. It is transporting: I remember my childhood delight at this man. Then I see it mirrored in my son’s eyes and I am a child again.
    Dan delights in Seamus, who grabs his hands, trying to shove his gnarled old fingers into his gummy little mouth. They beam at each other and coo. I have little doubt that he will be introduced to the delights of catfish pizza in a few years.
    In the meantime, when Seamus and I visit Uncle Dan at the Jesuit nursing home at Fordham, we try to make it in time for the daily Mass. There is nothing like going to Mass and being one of three or four non-priests in the room. Once,