a small sketch of two people I adore:
HIS NAME IS RICHARD SCOTT...
HER NAME IS TAYLOR MARIE. He is 48 and she is 23. Taylor is my Granddaughter and Scott is my Son. What follows is not a tale of two saints, it is a sketch of two human beings who have produced an uninterrupted series of amazement's in my life and grabbed my heart the first moment I ever laid eyes on them. I have witnessed their births, cuddled them as tots, given advice as they have grown older, and adored who they eventually became. They have given me laughter when I was depressed, courage when I least expected it, forgiveness when I made mistakes, and love when I least deserved it.
In the cross-cutting of memory, I have been with them to hear chimes ring at midnight from a Denver cathedral bell and see the sun come up over a California mountain called Diablo. There are visions of buying lemon ices from carts for Scott and ice cream cones for Taylor, warm moments of holding them both in my arms, having complete strangers telling me how fortunate I was to have them in my life, the energy I felt when they were standing at my side, and the satisfaction of seeing them laugh and smile when they looked my way.
Etched in remembrance are twin bright faces I would watch when I took them to museums, saw how fascinated they were when they saw canvases that had been magically turned into paintings, of perfect summer evenings strolling through a park and playing baseball until after the sun had set, the pulsing heart and wondrous smile when they had on their faces when they saw something they had never seen before, and the wondrous memories I have of the both of them as I watched them begin to grow into adulthood.
There are so many other things. Like the laughter of my Son when his Mother and I took him to a free concert in Denver's City Park and watched him as he clapped with glee when a song had come to its end. Or the look on Taylor's face when I was at a cafe table with her and as she listened to old men with foreign accents argue over something at the next table then asking me why she couldn't understand a single word they said. Or the day she asked me if God made spiders too.
Then, of course, there was the rather infamous afternoon when the two of us were baking cookies on her Pretend Play Cooking Set when she was 4 years-of-age and living in Fremont, California. A stern look came over her face, as she informed me that my imaginary chocolate-chip cookies were not up-to-snuff, and she thought it best if I would never attempt to cook with her ever again. She immediately rose to her feet, grabbed her Play Pretend Cooking Set, stomped out of her bedroom, and slammed the door shut behind her.
But the event that I remember the most was being with with Taylor when I moved from the City of New York to Brentwood, California where she lived. We were walking through a stand of trees along a small river shortly after I had arrived. She was then 7 years-old, informed me that she didn't like me because I was living in her house and her mother and father had let me have her old room, and I can still recall the stunned look in her eye when I told her that I wasn't certain that I liked her either, so we would both have to work on getting to know one another. The next day, she told me that she loved me. I informed her that I felt the same way about her. We then began to laugh and she held my hand.
Nobody has ever loved harder than my Son. Prior to my arrival in Brentwood in 1999, I had invited him to visit me in the City of New York. We spent hours walking the snow-drowned avenues in the bitter cold of a ferocious winter, dining at the finest restaurants along West 46th Street, looking at all the glitter and neon in the lurid parish of Broadway at night, where dreams existed side by side with folks who were standing in some grimy doorway, and talking in my apartment on West 44th through the early evening until almost dawn. One Sunday afternoon we went to a matinee at the Saint James Theater to see The Who's Tommy. When returned to my apartment in early evening, he stood looking at me with his hands buried deep in the pocket of his coat, then said: Dad, other than my daughter Taylor, I love you more than anyone else in the world. It was one of the finest moments of my entire life.
He loves other things too: almost all forms of music; the Oakland Athletics; good food and spending hours cooking in the kitchen, bringing to perfection the details of the simplest meal; good cake and cookies; his two trucks, our two dogs; and, of course, that god damned beer which he swears he will one day give up. Down through the years, the journey with him has been filled with love and laughter and tears and argument. But love always seemed to prevail.
In the cross-cutting of memory, I have been with them to hear chimes ring at midnight from a Denver cathedral bell and see the sun come up over a California mountain called Diablo. There are visions of buying lemon ices from carts for Scott and ice cream cones for Taylor, warm moments of holding them both in my arms, having complete strangers telling me how fortunate I was to have them in my life, the energy I felt when they were standing at my side, and the satisfaction of seeing them laugh and smile when they looked my way.
Etched in remembrance are twin bright faces I would watch when I took them to museums, saw how fascinated they were when they saw canvases that had been magically turned into paintings, of perfect summer evenings strolling through a park and playing baseball until after the sun had set, the pulsing heart and wondrous smile when they had on their faces when they saw something they had never seen before, and the wondrous memories I have of the both of them as I watched them begin to grow into adulthood.
There are so many other things. Like the laughter of my Son when his Mother and I took him to a free concert in Denver's City Park and watched him as he clapped with glee when a song had come to its end. Or the look on Taylor's face when I was at a cafe table with her and as she listened to old men with foreign accents argue over something at the next table then asking me why she couldn't understand a single word they said. Or the day she asked me if God made spiders too.
Then, of course, there was the rather infamous afternoon when the two of us were baking cookies on her Pretend Play Cooking Set when she was 4 years-of-age and living in Fremont, California. A stern look came over her face, as she informed me that my imaginary chocolate-chip cookies were not up-to-snuff, and she thought it best if I would never attempt to cook with her ever again. She immediately rose to her feet, grabbed her Play Pretend Cooking Set, stomped out of her bedroom, and slammed the door shut behind her.
But the event that I remember the most was being with with Taylor when I moved from the City of New York to Brentwood, California where she lived. We were walking through a stand of trees along a small river shortly after I had arrived. She was then 7 years-old, informed me that she didn't like me because I was living in her house and her mother and father had let me have her old room, and I can still recall the stunned look in her eye when I told her that I wasn't certain that I liked her either, so we would both have to work on getting to know one another. The next day, she told me that she loved me. I informed her that I felt the same way about her. We then began to laugh and she held my hand.
Nobody has ever loved harder than my Son. Prior to my arrival in Brentwood in 1999, I had invited him to visit me in the City of New York. We spent hours walking the snow-drowned avenues in the bitter cold of a ferocious winter, dining at the finest restaurants along West 46th Street, looking at all the glitter and neon in the lurid parish of Broadway at night, where dreams existed side by side with folks who were standing in some grimy doorway, and talking in my apartment on West 44th through the early evening until almost dawn. One Sunday afternoon we went to a matinee at the Saint James Theater to see The Who's Tommy. When returned to my apartment in early evening, he stood looking at me with his hands buried deep in the pocket of his coat, then said: Dad, other than my daughter Taylor, I love you more than anyone else in the world. It was one of the finest moments of my entire life.
He loves other things too: almost all forms of music; the Oakland Athletics; good food and spending hours cooking in the kitchen, bringing to perfection the details of the simplest meal; good cake and cookies; his two trucks, our two dogs; and, of course, that god damned beer which he swears he will one day give up. Down through the years, the journey with him has been filled with love and laughter and tears and argument. But love always seemed to prevail.
Scott had been in the Army, stationed on a mountaintop in Germany and toured other portions of Europe, seen the idealism of others, learned how to live in the corrosive realities of adulthood and knew how to provide for others by the giving of himself to those who needed him. He had, after all, taken me in after I had lost almost all of my semi-fortune in New York City. Doing all of this while always trying to affect the I'm-only-a-regular-guy pose, which he most assuredly isn't. He is an intelligent reader, a seeker of knowledge and excellent mechanical ability, so much so that he designed a robot in order to speed-up and make more efficient the dispensing of parts for Toyota trucks. Nobody I know works harder or laughs more.
Meanwhile, my granddaughter as she grew older insisted upon living her own life to serve as a witness the life she wanted to live. By then, she had become a young woman with the beauty of model, delicate in both stature and face, stubborn as a mule, and what saved from preposterous narcissism was that she is devoid of hypocrisy with a style which was exuberant and gentle and kind and loving. I have often winced when I have seen her sad and was unable to make her happy, and sometimes completely missed the point when she told me why. If I'd only had a better answer, or were more intelligent than I actually am, perhaps the answer would have been there. Yet, she always forgave me. Each day, she has taught me something new. She gave me everything. Song and dance and declarative sentences were a part of her. She has always been attempting to define the tone and rhythm of her life. Sometimes she has failed. At other times she has been victorious. But she has always survived because of her own human decency and in her ability to find her own language, or style, to plunge ahead and begin anew.
...In spite spite of my venial sins and minor misdemeanors, the both of them have always stood at my side and I am proud to be in such grand and gracious company...
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