The entries published herein are works of FICTION (stop freaking out Aunt Lisa! Dad--that's not you!), and all names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of my imagination or are used fictitiously or are entirely too funny/ridiculous to go without mention. Any resemblance to actual events or locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is probably on purpose so I suggest you get over yourself.
Should you find yourself suggested, parodied, named, or otherwise outrightly called out for the purposes of my silly musings feel free to meet me behind the playground after school. I dare you.
Furthermore, should you even THINK about reproducing, copying/pasting, or otherwise jacking without my permission the content posted here I WILL SHANK YOU.
Finally, should you feel slighted, left out, or otherwise unappreciated by me, my family, or my Gregories please cease and desist before polluting my blog with the indecency that is your drug-addled existence and mind your vagina.
I met you on a particularly bright, particularly hot East Texas summer day. The kind of day that melds light and heat together to sear the lungs, squint the eyes, and blister the bare feet of running children. The kind of day that poses the question to the minds of East Texans young and old whether they live closer to heaven or hell.
It was 1981. You were an infant. I was six. I had the baby fever common to girls my age, that fierce urge to hold something and mother it and with it, the sad knowledge that the mommies of real babies don’t usually trust our kind to hold them.
But sometimes we asked anyway. Ryan, your mom said yes!
You were the first baby I ever held. I began with the rocking of you, careful, supervised.
You became a toddler, then, a windstorm of a child who could inflict more damage to himself and his surroundings than your holding girl ever could. You accumulated casts and stitches as some children collect rocks and caterpillars. It became a necessity, my holding you. I told myself and you this. You complied, and I held you till you grew big as me, and heavier.
My little boy: you. My first one. I credit all I know about mothering boys to you, my tiptoed one, my quiet one. From whom else would a girl among girls learn the secret languages of Transformers and Hobbits, Ninja Turtles and Masters of the Universe?
Astonishing, that you grew to be bigger than me. Astonishing, that we waded into the Texas gulf as laughing children and emerged as adults, shimmering and tall and sunburned, slick-stained with heartbreak and mortality. That we outlived the fishes and kittens and puppies of our childhoods, and all the rest of us: you.
You dreamed of clearer, bluer waters than our Gulf, more white sand than our sandbox could hold. Do you see them now? You dreamed of moving to New Zealand, making films in a land that God Himself wept for the beauty and the making of it. The land of Hobbitts and Magical Rings, Cowboys and Tattooed Aboriginals. The stuff of movies.
Astonishing, that we dared to believe that you’d live to grow gray in hair and beard, to see your own films at Cannes and Sundance, to marry a beautiful girl and become as good a father as you were a son, uncle, friend, brother.
Astonishing, the number and array of people whose lives you shined your light upon, so many of them here today. Your family, your friends, fellow artists and filmmakers, musicians, teachers, pastors, nurses, doctors, cancer survivors. Your friends, your amazing, wonderful friends…you have so many! To think that any of us ever worried that you, the sole boy in a house full of girls, the shy, intensely creative child who couldn’t sit still in class like the other kids, might grow up to be a kind of loner. Kind of…unpopular.
What a silly worry that was. Look at all of you here!
When I came to San Antonio last August for your benefit, Ryan, I got to meet so many of your friends and fellow artists. The refrain I heard over and over that evening was how talented you are. “The absolute best,” so many of them told me. “A genius,” I heard again and again. The popular consensus that night was that you could light the sun itself. That God said "Let There Be Light" and Ryan said, “Can I help?”
You were gifted. Now, in losing you, I’m reminded of a phrase from the eulogy of JFK Jr.: you had “every gift but length of years.”
You asked, as you were coming to terms with your disease, why God had given you such talent if you weren’t going to get to live long enough to use it fully. You knew you had more sets to light, more films to shoot, more art to create than you had time for.
Ryan, your instinct to create was so strong that had you lived to be ninety you wouldn’t have had time to finish your life’s work.
Your sister Alicia and I pondered this question late into the night last night. Why did God give you such talents if He wasn’t going to let you stay with us to fully realize them? Your talents, Ryan, your skill at lighting and set building, your artistry, your quick smile and thoroughly intelligent if not thoroughly odd, even macabre sense of humor—these talents opened your life to so many experiences and opened your life to so many friendships. Ryan, are you looking down right now? Look at all of us, each of us brought here today by our love for you, by our relationships with you. Look at all of us changed forever, for the better, for the knowing of you. Your talents, Ryan, they unleashed you into a circle of friends, into a community of creativity, that gave your life purpose, definition, and joy. Your talents allowed you to shine your lights on stages and movie sets and special events and especially, on each of us, no matter how briefly. And we are all better people for knowing you, Ryan, for being your childhood playmates, for being your friends in school, for working with you in theatre and film, for being a part of your living and dying.
Ryan, you lived and died intensely, with courage, with humor, with indomitable spirit and the clear, bright light of your being.
Shine on, Ryan. Shine on. You’re lighting a larger set now.
Bridger cried for you for hours last night. He remembers you taking us to Sea World. He remembers you drying him with a towel after the big whale splashed him.
My little boy: you. My first one. I credit all I know about mothering boys to you, my tiptoed one, my quiet one. From whom else would a girl among girls learn the secret languages of Transformers and Hobbits and Masters of the Universe?
Astonishing, that you grew to be bigger than me. That we waded into the Texas gulf as laughing children and emerged, shimmering and tall and sunburned, slick-stained with heartbreak and mortality. That we outlived the fishes and kittens and puppies of our childhoods, and all the rest of us: you.
You dreamed of clearer, bluer waters than our Gulf, more white sand than our sandbox could hold. Do you see them now?
I hope your heaven looks just like New Zealand, little brother.
These words, these nightmare words, these furied, banshee shoutings, these harbingers of all things unimaginable and catastrophic. These words no parent dare think about.
Bridger has a heart condition.
Bridger, my little man with the big heart.
His heart, his HEART is sick.
I watched that tiny heart beat on an ultrasound and there was my proof, my proof that I was growing a life.
I trusted that heart to beat beat beat beat beat beat beat. Rythmically, not sporadically, not spastically. Bridger is my calm child, my even keel, my smooth sailing. I expect no less of his synaptic firings and the pitch of his heartrate. At times he's been my pacemaker.
How many times have I blessed his heart? (I'm in love with you, honey / Say you love me too, honey...Loved you from the start, honey / Bless your little heart, honey....)
One of my favorite movies ever is E.T. Bridger too. Bridger, especially, loves the scenes where E.T.'s heart lights up. (I'll be right...HERE.)
Oh honey, my golden sunshine boy, be well.
Update 11/25/09: Bridger's chest x-ray came back and his heart appears to be the right size. (I always thought he had a really big heart but I'm glad to know it's actually normal. We're still waiting to hear back from the cardiology about his EKG.)
Today is September 18th, 2009. You are four years old today. My daughter, my miracle, this is your story.
When you were a tiny baby in Mommy’s tummy, I knew we would love you and I knew you would be special. You spent a great deal of your womb-time on the ocean and it will always be a part of you. You, too, are salty and deep, full of life, close and then distant in your tides, equally prone to storm and beauty.
I delivered you into this world like a powerful tempest. Our ship nearly sank in your birthing, and I fell asleep so that you would be safe. I let the winds pull you from me and lay you like a breath, like a whisper into Daddy’s waiting arms.
And then you were my baby at last. My daughter. You dreamed tiny baby dreams and gripped with your tiny baby fingers and you nursed until your belly grew round as the Earth.
Soon you walked. You became a toddler. You said words like “I love you,” and “Quiet!” and you called your brother “Bridger-Man.” You went to the Toddler House and made great friends and colored lots of pictures of yourself. You have always been particularly deft with a crayon.
Sometimes you got angry. You still do. We used to think you were a changeling, switched at birth with an adorable but malicious goblin. You still like fairy tales and story time is your favorite time of day.
You have style. Few people can pull off a tiara while driving a John Deere. Actually, you’ve always liked to dress up and be fancy. You especially like makeups and shopping with Mommy and Gri-Gri.
You love to swim and bathe. When your feet touch the water, you legs turn to fins with sparkling scales. You were born with eyes the color of the ocean. Now they are green like a mermaid’s tale.
You are loud--Siren song loud, battle-cry loud, loud as the voice of God, and as beautiful.
You dance everywhere you go.
You belly-laugh in your sleep.
So far, in your life, you have been a cowgirl, a queen, a witch, a cheerleader, a ballerina, a princess, a pumpkin, a hockey-player, a rock star, a bumblebee, a home-run hitter, and a kick-boxer. You have accomplished much.
Animals love you. The feeling is mutual. You are kindred spirits.
You love babies. You are gentle and quiet with them and it’s one of my favorite things about you. Someday you will be an amazing mother.
You fear nothing. You are the queen of superlatives: everything must be faster, higher, taller, bigger, louder. Even before you could talk, your first sign was “more.”
You are, hands-down, the best snuggler on the planet. And you give really good kissy-fests.
*
You tell fantastic stories. Few writers can connect pirates, Barbies, and tornadoes in a single plot line with any plausibility. Consider yourself gifted.
You sing with your entire being. You especially like show tunes.
We think someday that you’ll be an actress on the stage.
Rebecca Powell is a writer and editor with expertise in blogging, social media, and marketing. She lives in Cary, North Carolina with her husband John, children Bridger and Waverly, and a Golden Retriever named Aslan who can neither fetch nor swim. She has made a second career of managing her children's four hockey teams and is often found with either a cowbell or a glass of shiraz in hand.
A Reality Blog in which I Exploit My Family's Daily Life For Mass Entertainment and Little Profit. This is not a hoax. You may leave your questions in the box.
Posts
