My grandson will be reporting to the college of his choice — Drexel University — on the same weekend that his sister celebrates her 14th birthday. I can only imagine the tears and snot that my daughter will produce that weekend.
Xavion and Imani have the kind of sibling relationship that brothers and sisters should have: A malleable but unbreakable bond. Once he accepted that his sister was the next one up in the nursing game (“Mom! She’s drinking it all up!”) he showed the appropriate care and concern for her. She has the same adoration of him but gives him the sisterly “business.” When I visited with them in July of this year, Xavion was getting in his last few visits with his girlfriend and his sister was hazing him: “You can’t spend one night away from her? You guys are going to different colleges! What are you going to do then?”
I called Xavion on a recent Wednesday afternoon at 12:17 p.m.; he told me that he had just awakened. I laughed, and asked if he was “stacking Zs,” knowing that soon, classwork would keep him up. Xavion’s voice is now all about that bass (no treble) and I strain to hear the young one who would climb from his bed and ask me to rub his back. Things change. Imani showed me her interest in a band called BTS, and I heard a review of a book that mentioned that band. I bought the book (what, me? Buy a book?) and sent it to her. The 16-year-old protagonist of C.J. Farley’s novel, “Zero O’ Clock” is struggling to come to grips with the turmoil in her life. She has three good friends and a passion for the K-Pop band, BTS. When she has a revelation about how to navigate her new life it occurs on March 11th, my very real birthday.
I’ve written of my relationship with my oldest grandchildren, from their births through “Nugget Knocks,” Carolina Wren adventures and braving a line of 7 million kids to get an autograph on a book for Imani. When my daughter said she wanted Xavion to go fishing, I got a New Jersey fishing license and took them both. Imani was the most eager of the two to go birding in the woods with me and would record her birds in the journal I bought for her. When she was younger, she called me from her cellphone and I assigned the ringtone “twinkle, twinkle little star” to her calls. They used to be required to pay a toll to pass me; the fare was one kiss. But things change.
When their mother was 2 years old, Quincy Jones released an album entitled “Body Heat.” One of the offerings on the album (yes, it was vinyl) was Benard Ighner singing “Everything Must Change.” The sound of that song, the feelings evoked by it: Those were the things that led to the title of this column. That, and the acknowledgement of the inevitability of change.
“There are not many things in life we can be sure of — except — rain comes from the clouds, sun lights up the sky, and hummingbirds do fly.”
In the Midwest, there are few hummingbirds in early August, and the one I saw from my front door might have been fueling up for its long migration. My two hummingbirds are flying; one is away to college, to sip from the stems of knowledge in a larger garden. The other’s flight is shorter, but no less necessary, for high school is an important source of emotional nutrition.
Fly, my hummingbirds: Cool Papa loves you.
cjon3acd@att.net