Dancing down Memory Lane rouses the power of love

Chris paved the way. I didn’t know this when he was alive, how one human being would alter us, how one human being would show us a world we might have looked away from had we not known him.

This dawned on me as I sat with my family at the wedding of Chris’s grandnephew a few weeks ago. And this realization has stayed with me, that Chris McLean didn’t change just my family and me. He opened the eyes of everyone who knew him. And then everyone who knew him opened even more eyes.

But let’s begin at a different wedding. It is October 1967 and I am at Chris’s brother John’s wedding to Caryn. I am with my fiancé, such an old-fashioned word. But these were old-fashioned days, the sexual revolution still a scrimmage, love, honor, and obey still in our wedding vows. People married young back then so that, as the Beach Boys sang, “After having spent the day together,” we could “hold each other close the whole night through.” Caryn and John were 19 and 20 on their wedding day. My fiancé and I were 20 and 21.

This is what I remember about John and Caryn’s wedding: John’s brother, Chris, on the dance floor. Other people danced, I’m sure, but I don’t remember other people. I remember Chris. He was 7 and dressed in a tux or maybe it was a dark suit, his hair slicked back like his big brother John’s, his black leather shoes polished to a shine. He was all smiles and dance steps, real ones and ones he made up. He danced alone and he danced with other people.

But it’s the image of John and Chris dancing together that lives in my head. John and Chris, two peas in a pod, the love between them more than any Beach Boys’ song ever came close to describing. And, by the way, Chris has Down syndrome. Did someone say this? Did I even know what Down syndrome was?

That’s how it was with Chris. Until the day he died, he was always Chris McLean first. “Crash” McLean to his friends in Walpole. He had Down syndrome, but it didn’t define him. His love of football defined him. Being the sidekick of legendary Walpole High School coach John Lee and unofficial manager of the team defined him. The way he drove around on his motorbike defined him (which may have led to his nickname, “Crash”). That he read the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald every day defined him. That he never met a doughnut he didn’t like defined him.

Chris became part of our family because John and Caryn became part of our family. He stopped by with them at every holiday and for every big occasion. It went like this: John, who is choosy about the people he loves, loved Chris. So we loved Chris, too. John taught us all, my kids, my friends, my kids’ friends, anyone and everyone who stopped by on a holiday, to see Chris for all he was and not for the few things he was not.

Fast forward to the recent wedding of Chris’s grandnephew. See? There’s John and Caryn’s grandson Justin, the groom, and there’s Jessica, his bride, a young woman I have only just met, and there’s my granddaughter Lucy, who has Down syndrome. And they are all on the dance floor. Almost everyone is on the dance floor. Lucy is dancing with her father and Justin is dancing with his bride and then in a single movement, Justin is dancing with Lucy and for a second, 1967 overlaps with today in my head because in Justin I see John. And in that moment I see how love is passed on and on and on and on.

When it’s time for Jessica to throw her bouquet, all the single ladies line up. Lucy lines up too, and Jessica, following tradition, turns her back to them. Then the DJ shouts, “One! Two!” And Jessica raises her arms. But on “Three,” when she’s supposed to toss her bouquet into the air, she doesn’t. Instead, she turns and faces the crowd, walks straight to Lucy, and gives her the bouquet.

And the crowd explodes in cheers, as love is passed on again.

This is how the world changes. Little by little. Through example. One day at a time.

This is the power of love.

Please join Lucy and me at the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress Annual Buddy Walk and Family Festival on Oct. 8 in Wakefield at Wakefield Common. Sign-in is at 11:30 a.m. Festivities begin at noon.

Columns