In The Sky
Posted April 15th, 2005 by Sean WilliamsI want to write about little Lucy, my niece, who was born frickin’ *yesterday*. I can’t because it isn’t my story, and also because I don’t know what to say about this little mermaid of joy, this little “girl” who was breathing fluid one minute and looking askance at me a few hours later, but I will say this. She does a double yawn. She did it a bunch of times. She starts yawning, the yawn crests and she looks like she’s done with it, but she finds a whole nother gear of yawn and commits, slamming the yawn, jaw unhinged head back, legs stretching.
And, as those of you who have ever been up almost all night drinking scotch with Ian will realize if you think back on it, that’s Ian’s yawn. Ian will start the yawn and then halfway through just go for it and let it rip. Ian yawns like Jordan used to hang in the air, just as you think he’s coming down he goes up a little higher. He yawns like Lucy, and there’s no way she could have learned it from him.
No, there’s another blog that goes here. There’s a blog about the fact that we were rejected by the New York Music Theater Festival. There is a blog about potential energy vs. kinetic energy. There is a blog about the fact that Lucy, so far, has done only a couple of things with her life – managed to be both fat and cute at the same time, managed to hold the attention of a group of people in the room with her, managed to make everyone laugh who is predisposed to do so- and to compare those things with where I currently am in my life, capable of the same things and almost *nothing* more due to the fact that my potential energy has never become kinetic, that even when I do try, even when I bend my back to the task at hand, I achieve exactly as much as I do when I do no work at all and I sit around drinking with my friends and watching movies and having fun. That, although there is not a single inkling in me of belief in the supernatural, that I have never thanked God for anything or felt his presence in my life in any way whatsoever, somehow I can still feel the hot breath of failure, the magical impulse of destruction that hangs just outside everything I attempt, waiting to swoop in and make bad anything I am working on the second I hold on with only one hand instead of two. That, although I can’t believe in angels guarding over me, I am constantly given proof that there are demons, or more likely imps, nasty creatures made of mischief not malice, that spare me cancer but give me GERD, that bless me with the passion to attempt the things that they deny me the talent and opportunity to see through, that allow me to hear and understand greatness but hide from me the secret keys to recreating that genius, that not only trip me as I work my way toward that which means more to me than anything in the world, but also inspire me to run before I trip, and trick me into believing, every time I fall, that I am building character, that I am becoming stronger, that I am closer this time than the last, so that I get up and take another terrible galloping sprint-stagger toward the goal before falling and failing again and again and again and again.
That’s the blog I need to write. But you should see little Lucy in person, you should see her stretch her legs out. She’s got Ian’s cheeks and Tessa’s face, Tessa’s ears and Ian’s nose, she’s got fingernails and batches of hair and, for some reason, my Mom’s thumbs. My parents wanted us to be better than them, as they wanted to be better than their parents. Lucy is gonna have it hard, being asked to be better than her mom and dad, and I guess there’s a part of me that wants to set the bar for myself before I bring in a little kneebiter. I want my child to want more than what I still can’t seem to achieve. I want some measure of greatness for myself, so that my child can achieve more than that.
So, it’s an emotional roller coaster today. And, I guess, I need to get to work.