When I was 11 or 12, Gerard and his mother moved next door to us up the street from a sweet-smelling giant Wonderbread bakery in Providence, Rhode Island. In the morning, you could smell the bakery from a mile away. If I biked down to the rear trucking dock early, I might get a fresh loaf thrown to me.

Gerard’s mother worked long hours at the bakery; there was no sign of the father, and no one ever mentioned him.

Before social media, there was a sacred tradition in my neighborhood of minding your business; no obnoxious, broken people to invade our privacy or trade-in paranoia, cruelty,  conspiracies, and rumors.

What happened to Gerard’s father was not our business.

Gerard’s mother worked hard to pay her bills. She was rarely home, and the boy himself was a mystery; he was a year or two younger than me and never came outside to play.

I never did, either.

We became friends in the most unlikely way, the outcast way, the way of the weird and different.

We had a lot in common. My mother was never home, and I also had a learning disorder that would remain undiagnosed for half a century.

Today, I would immediately recognize Gerard as autistic, but we had never heard the word then or knew about learning disorders.

I did know he was prone to fits and temper tantrums; we could hear the disturbing shouting and crying from across the driveway.

I met Gerard for the first time in his backyard, which adjoined ours. As a welcome present, I gave him a puzzle kit I had gotten tired of. He loved puzzles, it turned out, and because of that, he also liked me.

One day my mother looked out the window and came downstairs on her way to work, shouting that Gerard had climbed the maple tree in the backyard and had climbed almost all the way up. It seemed, she said that he wouldn’t come down. Then she left for work.

I looked out the window and rushed to the phone – she told me to call the fire department before she left, which often came to take cats out of trees.

(We didn’t know then that cats would almost always make their way down once they got hungry or cold.)

The fireman had different notions about sensitive kids then; one jumped out of their trucks, climbed up the ladder, tossed the crying Gerard over a shoulder,  and climbed down with him, the boy screaming every step of the way.

The fireman who took him down told him to return to the house and stay there until his mother came home, or they would keep him in jail. “I’m not coming here to do this again,” he warned. “We’ll take your right to the police station.”

Gerard went inside and stayed there.

When his mother got home, she came over and thanked me but was embarrassed that I’d called the fire department and asked me not to call the fire department again. She might get into trouble, she said. She knew Gerard would do it again.

“You can get him down,” she said, “he trusts  you and likes you.” She didn’t offer to pay for this work; I didn’t think to ask.

I realized too late that I had been chosen as the official neighborhood “Get-Gerald-Down-From-The-Tree” Person. It made me nervous but also got me excited. Hiding out from school was boring. My parents said nothing about it, and I’m not sure they even knew.

Gerald didn’t ever want to go to school where he, like me, was often bullied cruelly (worse than me.) So he spent lots of time up in the tree.

He would often throw his loud tantrums and rebellions in the morning when it was time to walk to school. They weren’t big on school buses in Providence then. Nobody at school asked where we were; we often just didn’t go.

Two or three times a week, I would hear the screams, shouts, threats, and pleas and get ready for the knock on the back door.

“I’ve got to get to work,”  Gerard’s mother would say, desperate, “can you get him down from the tree? He’ll stay in the house once he gets there. He just does it to challenge me. ”

I don’t think she knew my name, but she always called me  “good boy.”

I skipped school as often as I went – I disliked it as much as Gerald did; we formed our own tiny community of outcasts. Our only interaction was around the tree if he was up in it.

My mother would always warm me to finish my breakfast before she left while Gerald sat high up in the tree, brooding and crying. He usually went higher up than the cat. I was jealous. I could never get that high. Some mornings, it was frigid up there.

This position was strange for a ten or 11-year-old kid like me, but times were different. We just assumed Gerard was willful. Neighbors took care of each other.

Gerald, I realized, was anxious, not rebellious. I knew this because I was anxious. He seemed sad to me, thin as a skeleton, thick brown hair home cut, two teeth missing out front,  and seemingly unable to smile. He wore oversized Red Sox sweatshirts, fading and torn.

Sometimes, he wore glasses. He rarely spoke. I liked him.

I knew he wasn’t just being stubborn; something else was happening. He was scared to death of school. I was too.

I tried all kinds of things to get him down – dirty pictures in a magazine I had hidden under my mattress, pieces of chocolate, more puzzles, pleas, toys, and stories. I read him jokes from Mad Magazine and tempted him with the newest Marvel comics.

I was always patient with Gerard; I knew where he came from. He had every good reason for being up in that tree, but as I told him, it wasn’t a sensible long-time solution. “You can’t just spend your life up in a tree ever time you get pissed off,” I advised.

In our own way, we had become friends.

I explained to him that life was sometimes just something you had to get through. He listened but rarely responded.

Eventually, he always came down. It was not comfortable, he said once.

But he had a good view of the vast cemetery just down the road.

He often stared at that. When he was up in the tree, I told myself it was time to go and get Gerard Down Out Of The Tree. That was the way I put it.

It just became somewhat routine, a metaphor for difficult things that had to be done.

But I wanted the process to take less time.

Eventually, I conjured up what I called the “Fear Game.”

I told him we had a new game to play. He was curious. I said it was the “Get Gerard Down Out Of The Tree” game; he was the hero and the star, just like Batman.

Maybe, I said, we could put together a real game and sell it; we might both be rich and influential and never have to go to school again.

The game had to be played one step at a time. I would list things in the neighborhood: people, dogs, bullies – and there would be a piece of licorice if he could guess any of them. I would make sure he would win most of the time.

But he had to climb down to get the licorice or other penny candy (my grandmother sold penny candy in her mom-and-pop store, (and I always had plenty on hand, as I have explained to many horrified dentists.).

I was generous about declaring him a winner and giving him points. It usually only took ten or fifteen minutes before he was down on the ground chewing on his tootsie roll.

The game broadened a bit – we had a truth game where I spoke the truth about us. We were okay; we would be all right, not in danger, and not stupid or strange. Nobody could beat us up. The teachers would all be cursed by witches and disappear.

Each time he agreed, he got a piece of a tootsie roll. I didn’t realize it then, but somehow, getting Gerard out of the tree was good for both of us.

I hope he saw it that way too.

One day, Gerard and his mother were gone. They moved away. No goodbyes or explanations. I never saw him or heard from them again. I never even knew his last name. One day they were there; the next, they were gone.

This weekend, Maria was feeling some high anxiety. I startled myself by saying, “Let’s Get You Down From The Tree.” We talked a bit, and the fear went away. I realized only then that I had come to see Panic Attacks and other anxiety as a matter of coming down from the tree, one step at a time.

I stopped to wonder where that phrase came from. It came bubbling up.  It came from Gerard and from getting him down from that tree.

I hadn’t thought about Gerard for years and years.

Gerard had taught me a compelling lesson about seeing anxiety, recovering, and returning from it. I call this “Coming Down From The Tree.”

I was on fire to write about it.

Maria loved the idea, and soon, we laughed about it. Her fear had melted away – one truth at a time, one thought at a time. She had come down from the tree.

I know only too well that panic usually comes when we lie about ourselves when we are afraid of things that aren’t dangerous and believe we are in a kind of danger that we are not in. I was most afraid when I could not accept life or its inevitable pain.

The phrase is, I now know, an unconscious but valuable metaphor for experiencing anxiety and conquering it.

It is a matter of pausing, thinking about reality and the truth.

For years now, and without realizing it or connecting the dots, I reflexively think of it when I get anxious or suffer a panic attack.

It’s time to get down from the tree.

And like, Gerard, I do.

I hope Gerard had a happier life.

Bless you, friend, wherever you are.