biography
Abraham Goodman was born to two poor Irish Catholic parents in Brooklyn, NY. His father, Steven, was killed in the Gulf War when Abe was ten, and his mother Sarah struggled to support the two of them on a nursing salary and a military pension. Abe was a good kid--generally quiet and well-behaved, but with a strong stubborn streak and a sense of morality that made him an easy target for bullies in his class. It wasn't exactly that Abe would instigate the fights, it was more that it was hard for him to back down from the challenge--a perpetual flaw of character that he would find himself repeatedly running into for--oh, the rest of his life, really.

When Sarah was offered a higher paying job in Boston, she couldn't resist it--and this began the somewhat easier second half of Abe's childhood. He emerged from an awkward, gangly adolescence to a more formidable high school career (though he still wasn't particularly popular, being both incredibly stubborn and of a mindset where he still sort of expected to be an outcast). Still, he was good at sports and he found himself fitting in easily with the more athletic students--he joined the hockey team in his sophomore year and found himself a captain by the end of his junior year, when he discovered a heretofore unknown talent for strategy.

Abe graduated from high school and was studying fine arts at Bunker Hill Community college--with the plan of applying to a four year program once he had a better paying job--when the attack on the World Trade Center happened. By the end of the year, America was at war and Abe had enlisted. He served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and most of one in Iraq--and he has a litany of military honors and awards that he doesn't really like to talk about much. Not because they aren't impressive or because he doesn't feel like he deserves them--though he does feel that way, sometimes--more because they're irrelevant to civilian life. They meant nothing at home.

When he returned back to the states he felt largely disoriented by the way the world had changed around him. He tried to pick up where he left off--using his GI bill to go back to school, but fine arts didn't have much appeal anymore. After over a decade of trying desperately to do-good overseas, it was hard for him to face a life of--well, relative leisure. He found himself leaning heavily on MassVets services to help with his reintegration, and it was during a reintegration program that he found--what he feels is--his true calling. Though it's a little odd to call it that sometimes, considering--in truth, if there was a time when he could have or would have slid off the rails, a time when there was the maybe definite possibility of him being less than okay, than it was mitigated by circumstance neatly, cleanly--with a sort of precision that he would have envied if he'd thought it logical or pre-ordained, or anything beyond the most vague sort of ironic. One day, he went to a bar and at the bar he drank a little more than would be advisable and he met a girl and they made a night out of sort of inadvisable activities and almost nine months down the line there was a little girl named Josephine. It's a story that isn't much of a story and it doesn't matter beyond the fact that she exists and she is his and only his and he loves her more than life itself (even when she is a brat, which she is a lot now--the terrible twos and threes are no joke).

He has worked as a social worker with the SAVE (Statewide Advocacy for Veterans' Empowerment) program for about two and a half years now, while he goes to school part time studying psychology to help him further his career of service. In his spare time, he also plays in an adult pick-up hockey league--which he generally drives forty minutes to an hour to get to games (Jo complains about it--a lot, but she also complains in the off season when they aren't driving out to see Uncle Monty and Uncle Dum Dum on a twice a week basis)--he is unofficially and very sarcastically their captain. He also coaches a local youth team--and they are terrible. Absolutely and completely terrible despite his best efforts (probably because he has a hard time enforcing any sort of discipline on them--they're just kids, after all). Jo wants to join them someday--as a goalie, which is her favorite position and the ultimate irony in his life, probably. He's very, very busy--he makes a slightly less-than horrible salary that gets pinched by child care and food and supplies and he works way more than the forty hours in his paycheck, but it's all rewarding. It makes him feel pretty alive, so who is he to complain?