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Walking Across Frozen Grass

AJ's Mom waived from the doorway of his one-bedroom mobile home. She looked out of place there, graceful and elegant, in contrast to her unfortunate surroundings. She would have looked more at home on TV, selling mini vans to working moms, but we weren't there to shoot a commercial, we were there to interview her about her son's mental illness.

Inside, I sat her on the couch and assessed her features for lighting. Her short hair, bleached by the Texas sun, framed her face perfectly in gold. Her skin was smooth, light bronze with just a few freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. An easy subject to light.

I put the camera on the tripod and John placed the microphone. The director settled in beside me. "Don't look at the camera," he said, "It's just you and me talking, OK? "

She nodded and smiled a broad confident smile, but her eyes revealed a different mood. These eyes had seen a lot of tears, they had known real pain.

I saw those same eyes, on another woman, in another town. Sitting across the kitchen table after the children were asleep. Her youngest was dieing of cancer. She was pale and unkempt, and her bottom lip quivered when she spoke, but her eyes were the same.

Throughout the years of shooting interviews and studying features, I'd see those same eyes many times, on many faces, in waiting rooms, and ICU's, in custody hearings, and in food kitchens. I'd eventually come to learn that they were the saddest and most frightened eyes in all the world. The eyes of a parent who's child is hurting. But I couldn't truly appreciate them, until late one awful Christmas eve.

We were staying at my folk's log cabin in North Carolina to help care for my mother. She had just returned from the hospital, and my father had just been admitted. After a long day of visiting, cooking and playing games we put Colter to bed, and I started wrapping presents.

About an hour had passed when my son woke up screaming with a fever of 104. The pediatrician on the phone, told Julie to get Colter to the emergency room as quickly as possible.

He's fine now, but as I walked to the car across the crunchy frozen grass with my son in my arms, Julie looked up at me and I finally understood. I saw the humbling and overwhelming responsibility of being a parent both in Julie's eye's, and through my own.

July 11, 2005 | Permalink

Comments

[Robin P]

It's a horrible feeling and I know that look well.
Last year when Lillianna dehydrated and was hospitalized for 2 days,Rich and I shared that look. We were helpless and at the mercy of the doctors and nurses who were taking blood,starting an I.V. and explaining her diagnosis to us. We couldn't do anything to help her other than stroke her arm and face and reassuring her that I would stay with her and that she was safe.
You have a beautiful way with words,Gary!