“Baby Jess needs you,” said the text from my eldest daughter, Lisa, at 9:40 p.m. on July 3rd. “I’m almost there,” was my reply.
My very good friend has two daughters, both of whom call me “Uncle.” Lisa has held the infant “Baby Jess” on her lap. While visiting Indianapolis from Colorado, the 24-year-old Jess broke her neck in a golf-cart rollover. In the hospital, she had reached out to friends on “Crackbook,” saying that she “needed” a shake and time on a laptop. I was on my way.
When I lived in St. Louis, Jessica would accompany her mother on trips from Southern Indiana to visit me. I worked in the advertising department of a department store and I kept Jess while her mother used my discount in the store. A co-worker once said this to me: “CJ, the oddest thing that I have ever seen is that pale little towheaded child riding so easily on your hip.” I have been a part of Jess’ life for a long time. I was housesitting her childhood home in Southern Indiana while her mother and sister vacationed when Jess broke her neck.
Jess was released from the hospital on July 4th, and her father drove her back to Colorado to recover. Weeks later Jess returned to Indiana to attend a friend’s wedding. She missed her initial flight and slid sideways of another friend’s schedule, so I picked her up at the airport. She spent the night and early afternoon of the next day with me.
I had never spent one adult day alone with Jessica. She was always in the company of others — mother, fathers, brothers, sister — and it was a delight to me to see the continued comfort that towheaded blond demonstrated in my company. She walked into my little apartment, and when I offered her a drink, she casually walked to the shelves that held my glasses and chose a 45-year-old beer mug for her water.
Years ago, I helped her mother write an essay for a college course; I drew from an essay written by James Dickey to help describe her experience in a cave. In “Delights Of The Edge,” Dickey wrote that he and his wife watched as their 13-year-old son tested, then leapt a gap over a ninety-foot chasm. He slipped, recovered, and then did a “silent dance of pure delight . . . dancing with the void, and loving what had just happened to him, and had not.” Jess’ mother may have forgotten that essay, as evidenced by the fear and anger she expresses about her daughter’s adventures. But Jess has grown into her own womanhood. Jess has “cried at 14,000 feet with ice axes in my hand at the top of (her) biggest fear. (She has) spent countless nights walking in the woods with the bears and beasts . . . in awe of the world around (her).” In Dickey’s essay, he quoted Henry de Motherlant, novelist and essayist: “If your life ever bores you, then risk it.” Jess is a graduate of Ball State, with a degree in Journalism. She may not have been exposed to de Motherlant, but she gets it. And when she awakes from her sleep in her hammock in the wild, she loves what “just happened . . . and had not.”
We shared things that night and day, not in a 2-girls-putting-their-heads-together and giggling way (‘cause one of us is a guy, so . . .), but in a two-adults-chatting way. I was glad to find her, and sent a text message to Lisa:
“Baby Jess is a delightful human being. You would enjoy talking to her.”