Notes: The title belongs to Clapton.
_____________________
My favorite picture of us sits on my desk, propped up against another picture frame.
No matter how many files and folders get piled up there, I never let it get covered. You�ve been in my office enough times to know that when it comes to stacking stuff up, any flat surface in the room is pretty much fair game, but somewhere along the line the rules changed. Under no circumstances can anything be placed in front of that picture. I know it�s crazy�it�s not as if I�ll forget about you if I can�t see your picture for a few seconds. But parenthood does funny things to people.
You know the picture I�m talking about, right? It was taken on our last trip to the farm to visit Grandpa Jed and his family. His neighbor had let us all go apple picking in his orchard, and Zoey had been helping you climb the trees to get at the apples way up in the branches. You probably don�t remember that your mother was practically having a heart attack back on the ground, but she was. I knew you�d be ok, though. You�re an outdoorsman, just like your dad.
Stop laughing at me.
Anyway, when you came down from that tree, your hair was covered in leaves. Cute was never really a word I used to use, but I honestly can�t think of a better one to describe how you looked in that moment. Adorable, maybe...another word that never used to be found in my vocabulary. I was always a little disappointed that you have my hair instead of your mother�s, but right then, with leaves blending into that brown hair poking out in all directions, and this incredible dimpled smile on your face, I couldn�t imagine you looking any more perfect.
So I scooped you up in my arms and sat you on my shoulders so you could grab some more apples from the tree, and as we turned around, Charlie held up a camera and snapped a picture of us. A few weeks later, when we were back home in Washington, he and Zoey sent us a letter with the photo enclosed. I don�t think I�ve ever seen either of us look so happy. We have the same smile, you know. Your mom was thrilled the first time you smiled and she saw your dimples. I don�t remember exactly how old you were when you first learned that you could use them to your advantage, but I remember thinking what a smart boy you were when you did.
Of course, when you figured out that the pout could make me melt, then it was all over.
You certainly got the politician genes, no doubt about that. I remember the first time I walked into the kitchen and heard you negotiating with your mom to get an extra cookie�I nearly died laughing. I guess you never really had the option of not being a bright kid. I mean, with a former President and the current Vice President as �grandpas,� the current President as �Uncle Matt,� and the entire senior staff of two administrations as aunts, uncles, or parents, you were pretty much doomed from the beginning.
We went in for a conference with your teacher a few months ago, and she told us that on the first day of class she always asks her students what they�re going to be when they grow up. You were the only one who immediately answered, �I�m going to be the President,� as if it were the most natural thing in the world. We weren�t surprised, of course. We figured that would be your answer�well, either that or a writer since Uncle Toby is�for some completely inexplicable reason�your hero.
I suppose that�s not so surprising in itself. The shocking part is the fact that he�s just as crazy about you as you are about him. I mean, I would defy anyone who knows you to not be crazy about you�but Toby was never big on kids, besides his own, of course. From the moment he met you after your mom and I brought you home from the hospital, though, you guys formed this strange kind of bond that nobody else really gets. You were crying when he stopped by our apartment, and no matter what your mom and I did, we couldn�t get you to quiet down. I was in the bedroom when she went into the kitchen to heat up another bottle for you, so she left you in his arms. By the time I came back into the room, you were cooing quietly, reaching up a chubby little arm to play with his beard. And he had this smile on his face that I had never seen before, or since.
When his book came out last week and we opened it to find that he had dedicated it to Huck and Molly, CJ, and you, your mom cried.
He�s not the only one, you know. All your aunts and uncles are nuts about you. Must be the Lyman charm. Well, I guess we�ve got to give your mom a little of the credit too�after all, what would you do without those gorgeous blue eyes to charm people with? I remember talking to your Aunt CJ about you at your last birthday party, and she told me that you had gotten the best of both of us, your mother and me. I never really thought of it that way, but I guess it�s true. You basically look like a miniature version of me, except that you�ve got your mother's eyes. You have her smile too, with my dimples. You know, years ago, when she first walked into my office for the first time, I think it was that smile that made me fall in love with her.
I don�t see that smile very often anymore.
See, the thing about your mom is, she deals with things better if she�s got someone else to take care of. She was the one who held me together after Rosslyn, you know. I never did tell you about that, did I? Our second year in office, some people decided that they weren�t too happy with Zoey and Charlie being together, and they shot at us on our way out of a building in Rosslyn. Grandpa Jed and I were both hit, and it was your mom who got me through it. She always has been one of the strongest people I�ve ever known. You�re lucky you got that from her too, along with her smile.
That�s why this hurts so much now�because she used to be the strong one.
You know, there are some things they never tell you about being a parent. They�re the little things that are too insignificant for people to tell you about beforehand, but that end up meaning everything in the end. Like the way you would stare at your hands when you were a baby, as if they were the most fascinating inventions ever created. Or the way your little hand would slip into mine as we walked down the street together, and the way your favorite Mets cap would always fall down over your eyes, and you wouldn�t care at all.
Mostly, though, it�s the way you would look at me, with those big blue eyes all full of joy, or tears, or overwhelming excitement. I�ve started to envy the way children feel emotion. It�s so pure, so utterly complete. Of course, on the other hand, there are some emotions I would rather not feel so intensely.
Seems I�ve been feeling a lot of those lately.
I�m beginning to resent the fleeting nature of memories. I�ve been sitting here just now, remembering moments from your life, and I�m wondering how there can be so many gaps. Looking back, I wish now that there was a way to capture each moment, each second of your life, to relive them again and again in my mind. But there are so many mornings having sleepy-eyed breakfasts together in the kitchen, and so many afternoons when you would drive your trucks around the rug in my office, and so many nights when I would tuck you into bed and feel your strong little arms wrap around me to give me a hug, that they�ve all begun to blend together.
There are crisp memories, too, of course, the ones that feel like they just happened yesterday. There was your first birthday, when Uncle Sam almost lit the house on fire knocking over your candles. There were your first teetering steps across my office into your mother�s arms. There was your first Mets game with me, and your first Yankees game with Uncle Toby. Your first Hanukkah, and Christmas, that incredible winter when the snow drifted down outside the window and your mother and I lay together on the couch with you in our arms, watching the candles flicker, and the lights on the tree blink.
I think about the firsts so I don�t have to remember the lasts.
The last morning I came in to wake you up, tickling you through your sheets, honking annoyingly like an alarm clock, the way that always made you wake up giggling. The last time you packed up your schoolbag with the precision you inherited from your mother, and gave her a kiss on our way out the door. The last time you looked at me, and called my name, those childishly expressive eyes full of nothing but abject terror.
I never saw the car coming.
I should have looked before I went. I had driven that intersection hundreds, thousands, of times in my years here in DC. I knew it was a bad intersection. I knew the statistics of the accidents there. I just never imagined that you would become one of those statistics.
She wasn�t drunk. She didn�t have a woman in labor in the backseat. She wasn�t on the phone, or playing with the radio. There was no good reason for her to have run that red light. She just wasn�t looking, wasn�t paying attention, and instead of hitting the brakes, she sailed right on through, into the side of my car. Your mother told me once that if I was in an accident, she wouldn�t stop for red lights. I used to think it was romantic.
I don�t anymore.
They say you died instantly on impact, and I think they wanted me to find some consolation in that. But I saw the look on your face, just before the world came crashing in on me, and I know that you saw what was coming. The cops can tell me all they want that you never knew what hit you. I know they�re lying.
I can�t tell your mother that. She believes that you never felt a thing, and it�s better that way. She�s broken without you, and I don�t know what to do about it.
I don�t know her anymore. This woman who lies in my arms at night and wakes up to look at me with haunted eyes is not the woman I married. I try to tell her that we�ll be alright eventually, that life will go on. But I don�t know if she even wants it to. There was a time, years ago, after I had been shot, when I wondered if I truly wanted to live anymore. It was your mother, with a little help from Grandpa Leo, who got me through that, and now I look at her and I see that same shadow in her eyes, and there is nothing I can do.
My helplessness infuriates me.
I have never been a powerless man. I have never been one of those people who will take offenses sitting down, who will sit back and shut up in order to keep things on track. That�s just not me. The job I hold now, some people refer to it as the second most powerful position in the country. And yet I sit by your mother�s side, and I hold her as she cries, and I can do nothing to help her.
She�s not alone in her grief. Aunt CJ stays with her some of the time, and I will come home from work some nights to find your mother curled up asleep on the couch, and CJ sitting in the armchair, staring blankly at the tv with red-rimmed eyes. As soon as I come in, she�s her old self again, and I can�t tell you how comforting that is to me, but I�ve seen her in those moments, between reality and when the mask goes on, and the fact that she can look so fragile scares me.
The others are coping in their own ways. Toby has thrown himself back into his work with a vengeance. He turned down the Communications Director job when I offered it to him, but ended up consulting with Uncle Will so much that he might as well just hold the title anyway. Since all this happened, he�s been working even more tirelessly, and driving Will even crazier than usual. Not only is he working on the President�s speeches, but he�s writing another book too. Most mornings he�s there when I arrive, and many nights I�ve seen the light on in his office when I go home to your mother. CJ tells me that even when he does go home, he rarely sleeps.
I know the feeling. After Rosslyn, I used to have nightmares. In the months after the shooting when she was staying with me, she would hear me calling out in the night, and would come in to hold me until I could fall back asleep. By the time you were born, I was only having them twice a year or so, but every time I did she would still be there, ready to comfort me and help me get over them. Now the nightmares come every time I close my eyes, and even she can�t drive them away.
You haunt me.
Not just in my dreams, you know. I see you everywhere. In the roadside caf� we would go to every weekend for danishes after temple. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where we would sit in the summer, making fun of tourists and Republicans. In the office, my office, which will always belong to Leo in my mind, where you would sit for hours, reading, and playing with your toys, and coloring pictures for everyone to post on their walls around the building.
Most of all, I see you in the people around me. I see you in the bruised look in your mother�s eyes, and the rubber ball Toby flings at the walls and the lamps in his office every so often, thinking we can�t hear him. I see you in CJ�s increased worry for everyone around her, and in the President�s sympathetic understanding when I make mistakes that no Chief of Staff should be making.
I see you when I look in the mirror.
I miss you so much. More than that, though, I miss the future, the time we missed out on together. I never got to watch you play baseball, or teach you how to ride a bike. I never took you to the beach on the Vineyard that I spent so much time on as a kid. I never got to watch you fall in love, and help you mend your inevitable broken heart. I never got to give an embarrassing toast on your wedding day, or hold your child in my arms.
I miss having those memories to hold on to.
Your mother dreamed about you last night, and for the first time since you died, it wasn�t a nightmare. She was sitting in the rocking chair that Charlie and I built for you up at the farm the summer she was pregnant with you. You came to her, and crawled into her lap, and she read to you, like she did every night before you went to sleep. And it was a story about someday, a story of promise. You curled up there, in the rocking chair with her, and you fell asleep in her arms. As you drifted off, you faded, until she was alone on the chair, alone in the room. But it wasn�t an alarming kind of alone. It was peaceful, and comforting.
When she woke up this morning, her eyes were a little less haunted, and just for a moment, as she told me about the dream, she was the woman who walked into my office and my life without a second thought. It gave me hope, just for a few minutes. Someday, maybe, we�ll be ok. It doesn�t mean forgetting you. It just means moving on, living our lives.
But wait for me, son, wherever you are. Promise me that. When my day comes, I want to walk away from my life holding your hand.
You were the best of both of us.
I love you, my boy.