FEATURE — My junior high crush, Josh, was dimpled, dashing and trouble. Even his mother said so. But she said that about all seven of her sons. And they were – trouble. Every single one of them. And they were also charming and wild and wonderful. Every single one of them.
Josh’s mother, who was also a dear friend of my mother’s, told me I was the daughter she’d always wanted. I suspect it was because I was brunette like her. I was petite like her. I was bubbly, chatty and charming like her. And I was stubborn just like her, too.
Instead of a single daughter, she had seven sons.
Seven sons who would curse and fight for fun. Seven sons who’d leave holes in the drywall when she went out for milk. Seven sons who would upend the dinner table over claims of a brother’s surely intentional loud breathing while eating cereal.
Josh’s mom was a single working mom who tirelessly loved her boys.
She’d wake on weekdays at four a.m. to start the day at the service station she owned. She’d be home by seven to wake her seven, breakfast them and get them off to school. She’d return to the station to work a full day and be home for homework, dinner and bedtime. Then, she’d do it all over again.
As their mother, she was generous, loyal and fierce. She had to be. And she was wickedly funny. She had to be that, too.
When my older sister, Becca was a newly licensed driver and got into her first accident, it was Josh’s mom who came over to console her. “Don’t worry about that,” she told my sister, “at least you’re not crashing into inanimate objects like my boys.”
She then told my sister about every telephone pole and parked car her boys had hit during their various driving careers and confided that she even carried a wad of cash in her purse so she could offer cash settlements on the spot of every accident.
By the time she left an hour later, my sister was properly consoled, if not slightly horrified about how expensive it was to raise a family of seven boys.
Josh’s mom invited me over regularly for sleepovers. Those nights were filled with late night runs to her service station for junk food, endless hours of Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt, both of which were the Holy Grail of fun for a girl who didn’t own a Nintendo of her own, and endless hours of crushing on her boys, especially Josh.
I always felt safe at her house – seven rowdy boys notwithstanding. No one ever treated me as anything other than a sister, which I suspect was at his mother’s direction if not her demand, although I wish they would have.
In the early morning hours of most of the sleepovers, after he’d spent most of the night out with friends, Josh and I usually found ourselves cuddled up on the couch watching Thunder Cats together or and listening to Led Zeppelin albums.
I’d often imagine what it would be like if the moment overtook him, and he kissed me. Just in case he wasn’t scared of his mom.
He never made a move, capable as he was. So capable, in fact, rumor was Josh had broken the family virginity record of fifteen previously held by his older brother, Rob.
And while Josh was my official crush, Rob would have done, too. But then again, Rob would have done it for anyone – and everyone – because he was that guy. He set the mark. Everyone else followed.
He wrestled, so all his brothers wrestled.
He ran for miles around the neighborhood shrouded in black garbage bags with duct tape at the ankles and wrists the night before weigh-ins, so everyone else did too.
He carb-loaded on cheap pepperoni pizza, so everyone else did.
He partied, played, laughed, and charmed, so everyone else did.
From thirty years ago, I can still see Rob’s smile flash and his eyes dance from across the living room, beckoning me and everyone else to follow along.
As the years went by, he still beckoned. He beckoned as he built two successful businesses. He beckoned as he supported several of his brothers when their lives got hard. He beckoned as he regularly showed up for nieces and nephews at their school plays and soccer games. So much so, one niece even calls him hers.
Tuesday morning, I got the terrible news that Rob climbed to the top of an iconic bridge in my hometown and jumped to his death. No one else was there to follow.
Later that night, the news of the tragedy still spilling down my face, I sat at the feet of Lukas Nelson and his band while he sang about God. “She told me,” Nelson sang, “’God won’t give us more than we can handle.’ She said, ‘I fell in love with you because you’re strong.’ She told me ‘God won’t give us more than we can handle. And at least we’ve got each other if I’m wrong.’”
I couldn’t help but think that Nelson’s woman had been wrong: Rob had been given more than he could handle. And none of us had been there when she was wrong.
The next night, a friend with whom I’d shared the news about Rob texted me on her way home from A Silent Sky, a play based on the true story of the underrecognized astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. “[The play] made me think a lot about your friend, Rob,” she wrote. “Do we make a difference in this life? What is our purpose and meaning, especially when we don’t feel that our contribution has specific worth?”
Then, she quoted Henrietta Leavitt’s take on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity: “Mass and energy are just different forms of the same things. They shift back and forth forever. So, nothing’s gone. It just shifts.”
I’d like to think that Henrietta and Einstein are right, and my friend Rob isn’t gone.
I’d like to think that his energy has just shifted. That he has shifted.
And I’d like to think that his timeless beckoning has shifted again too – that he now beckons us to feel our worth, to know our contributions matter, and to not feel so alone. Even when God gives us more than we can handle.
Kat Dayton is a columnist for St. George News. Any opinions given are her own and not representative of St. George News staff or management.
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