In the meantime, this is a kindasortabutnotreally guest post by my oldest younger sibling.
She wrote this while Graydon was in the hospital and I asked her quite some time ago if I could share it on my blog. She agreed, and it just took me a while to do it (four months, give or take a few weeks).
I've said before that I find it really difficult to process that time in the hospital with G man, but I do believe that post is lurking inside me. And I read her words again tonight, for reasons that I will detail later, and I thought it was really too good not to share. So, a love letter from my sister:
FOR GRAYDON
I see a young man - tallish like his dad, isn’t he? Not super tall, but pretty tall - taller than me, anyway.
Dimples for miles, canyon dimples! My dad’s black hair, straight as a stick and all over the place. There is a mischief in that divoted grin, and dark eyes, but I can’t tell yet if they’re a dark sort of blue, or maybe brown. Maybe hazel. Doesn’t matter - they’re a trickster’s eyes, slanted just a bit. Take one look at those eyes and you’re a goner - you’d allow him most anything. This will be a recurring theme throughout his life, and will cause him no end of grief, though he won’t realize it until he’s hurt someone. But he’ll learn.
He’s a hockey player. In his pads, he looks so much older and bigger than he is; he looks like he could shove hard into another player and pin them against the screaming glass, grinding in with bull shoulders, hair wet behind a hard plastic mask. He looks almost scary with all that sports stuff on, but the moment he pulls down his mask and shakes out his drenched hair and grins (no black gaps in those teeth yet, thank God), he is only eighteen again, and the world at his feet.
And after, maybe when he’s old enough to sit down with his parents for a beer and a real talk - not a parent talk, but a real talk, between people who see each other for who they really are - no smooth expanse of marble but endless tiny flaws, endless tiny chips and cracks - maybe then, someone will tell him how scared they were, a very long time ago. The tubes and the white linens. The tiny fluttering heartbeat beneath translucent new skin. The gasping that filled those nights.
Someone will tell him, and he’ll only shake the black hair out of his sweet eyes and grin, and say, “Huh.”
I see a young man - tallish like his dad, isn’t he? Not super tall, but pretty tall - taller than me, anyway.
Dimples for miles, canyon dimples! My dad’s black hair, straight as a stick and all over the place. There is a mischief in that divoted grin, and dark eyes, but I can’t tell yet if they’re a dark sort of blue, or maybe brown. Maybe hazel. Doesn’t matter - they’re a trickster’s eyes, slanted just a bit. Take one look at those eyes and you’re a goner - you’d allow him most anything. This will be a recurring theme throughout his life, and will cause him no end of grief, though he won’t realize it until he’s hurt someone. But he’ll learn.
He’s a hockey player. In his pads, he looks so much older and bigger than he is; he looks like he could shove hard into another player and pin them against the screaming glass, grinding in with bull shoulders, hair wet behind a hard plastic mask. He looks almost scary with all that sports stuff on, but the moment he pulls down his mask and shakes out his drenched hair and grins (no black gaps in those teeth yet, thank God), he is only eighteen again, and the world at his feet.
And after, maybe when he’s old enough to sit down with his parents for a beer and a real talk - not a parent talk, but a real talk, between people who see each other for who they really are - no smooth expanse of marble but endless tiny flaws, endless tiny chips and cracks - maybe then, someone will tell him how scared they were, a very long time ago. The tubes and the white linens. The tiny fluttering heartbeat beneath translucent new skin. The gasping that filled those nights.
Someone will tell him, and he’ll only shake the black hair out of his sweet eyes and grin, and say, “Huh.”
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