When he was born, he was bald and so white-skinned that I glanced around the room to see if there had been a mistake. Surely, this white boy couldn't have come out of me. So I blurted out, 'Well look at you! You're just a little white boy!' and the whole room burst into laughter, including the beautiful black female doctor who delivered him. He had such a look about him. He was so funny-looking: bald, pale, and had huge ears. Then he had these penetrating eyes that seemed like he was seeing right through you and beyond.

As an infant, he was incredibly easy to care for. He rarely cried and seemed to understand everything. He actually never even had a temper tantrum as a baby. I could explain and reason with him about anything. He seemed so old and wise, even as a two-year-old.

Then, he was so incredibly bright. He learned everything so quickly and easily. By the time he was five, before going to Kindergarten, he could count to 100, count by twos, fives, and tens. Then in pre-school, he even figured out how to count by fours when his sister, Chloe, had learned how to do it in 3rd grade. She was so proud, counting by 4's slowly at the dinner table from 1-20. Then she said, 'I don't know what comes after that.' Gian responded, 'Is it 24?' and I exclaimed, 'Yes!' Then he said, 'Then 28?' and '32?' and '36?' He got all the way to eighty, and Chloe had since covered her ears with her hands shouting, 'Make him stop, Mommy! Make him stop!' When I had taught him the Inchworm song, he asked me, 'If eight and eight are sixteen, does that mean that eight and nine are seventeen?' And when I responded, 'Yes!' he asked, 'Then nine and nine are eighteen? And nine and ten are nineteen, and ten and ten are twenty?' Of course when I said, 'Yes!' he then asked," Well then if sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two, then are sixteen and seventeen thirty-three?' He had figured all of this out all by himself, and he was only in Kindergarten.

When he was tested for the gifted program in Kindergarten, the gifted teacher told me then, that his I.Q. was 143. My husband and I suddenly began to worry about having the responsibility of properly raising a genius. We chose to bury the knowledge, never telling him or his sister, to ensure that they would be raised exactly the same way: with lots of love, attention, and encouragement for whatever their own hearts would dictate.

Gian's heart dictated that he play baseball. And yes, his giftedness reverted so easily that skill. He would play in the backyard with the neighborhood boys, ranging from eight to twelve years of age, when he was five. And he hung with the best of them. Then he played tee ball at Grant Park, where we had lived for four years, and he was always on the pitcher's mound. He would get all three outs all by himself, fielding the balls, then racing to the bases before the batters and base runners knew where to even run.

When we moved to Scottdale, he continued to play at Fitzgerald Field in Tucker, and Medlock Park in Decatur. He made All-Stars six times in seven seasons. He attended whatever schools I was teaching in, so his elementary years were spent at three different schools: Pointe South in Clayton County, Chattahoochee in Gwinnett County, and one year at the neighborhood school in Scottdale, which he went to because I was expecting a third child and was working on my Master's degree. Throughout his elementary school career, he made mostly straight A's, and tended to be the class clown.

He attended sixth grade at Shamrock Middle in Decatur, and his grades began to slump. He told me it wasn't cool to be smart anymore. That's when we decided to move to Gwinnett County. He attended Trickum Middle for seventh and eighth grades, and Parkview High as a freshman. He still maintained that it wasn't cool to be smart, and so he never shined academically again, which we seemed to be constantly fighting about. He tended to be grounded his whole seventh grade year, and actually didn't make many friends. However, he played Dixie League baseball at the Lion's Club for one year while Mountain Park was under construction, and then one year at Mountain Park. Both years, he made All-Stars. While in eighth grade, we encouraged him to join clubs and make friends, and he landed a small part in the play, Guys and Dolls. He decided from that moment on, that he wanted to become an entertainer. He started playing the drums in the garage and tried learning to sing. He started writing rap songs and poetry.

I had already trained him to twirl fire for the Samoan Knife dance, which was performed in my sister's professional Polynesian dance troupe, of which his sister, Chloe, and I were members. He had already done his first gigs as a Polynesian dancer at the Coca Cola Olympic Theatre during the '96 Olympics, doing 30 shows that summer, when he was only nine years old. He did occasional shows off and on for six years, and then he twirled fire in the show when he was 14. In the summer of his 15th year, he was supposed to have done shows all summer to save money to buy a car. He died at the start of summer and never got the chance.

As Gian's parents, we tried to expose him to as much culture and creativity as possible. He loved to draw and was just learning how to do fancy lettering. We took him to umpteen museums in Atlanta and across Europe, the Kennedy Space Center, Washington D.C., and New York City. He went to his first rock concert when he was ten, to see Sting at Lakewood, and then we took him to see Queens of the Stone Age and Incubus. When he was 12, we took the whole family to Europe for six and a half weeks, traveling to London, Paris, Amsterdam, the French Riviera, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast, Venice, and Geneva.

When we first arrived in Paris, my husband, Thomas, had remembered that the first thing you have to do when going to a foreign country is to exchange monies. Just as he was arriving at the counter at the airport, he spotted a young boy standing beside him, walking away with money. He thought, 'Wow, that kid has it going on.' That's when he realized that the kid was his own son, Gian, who had just exchanged fifty American dollars to French francs. Again, Gian was only twelve, and we had never told him what to do, but somehow, he already knew.

Though all of this sounds like he was an amazing son, honestly, for most of his life, he was. He was nine and a half when suddenly he wasn't the baby anymore. That's when his seemingly calm demeanor began to give way to a more aggressive personality. That's when his grades started to slip. By the time he was twelve, our youngest son, Joseph, was turning three and Gian became increasingly restless. I guess it was the combination of the onset of puberty and being sideswiped by a little brother, that made Gian begin to rebel. He had always been reasonable up until that point. As stated earlier, we had just moved to Gwinnett when he entered the 7th grade and he had left his 'ghetto' city life behind him. He didn't make friends right away. In fact, he didn't begin to make friends till his eighth grade year, and still he was a bit shy and unconfident. By the time he was in the ninth grade and at Parkview, he actually had regular friends and was coming out of his shell. The sad part of that is that he was whisked away just as he was beginning to fit in. And now we can only surmise what would've become of our sweet son, G.

We know this much: he was a truly unique and interesting person. He had great insight, though was a little shy about sharing it. He had a passion for baseball. He was charming and sweet, but at the same time, cynical and withdrawn. He was a wonderful entertainer, and a great dancer. He was a great Scrabble player. He was brilliant, but sometimes was afraid to shine. Now he's a star twinkling in a foggy sky. He's irises blooming in September. He's baby birds that hatch in hanging baskets on the front porch. He's roses that are tossed and turned off of the Atlantic, and then washed ashore two days later. He is life-giving to strangers who continue to breathe through his lungs and hear his heart beat because of his donated organs. He's Chloe's and Rachel's little brother, and Joseph's big brother. He is our son, and he will never be forgotten.