Author: Sam Mitchell

Tommy was the kind of vocalist that I just did not get. When he sang, he had perfect diction and annunciated each word as if were trying to reach the farthest audience member in the back row. This tactic worked in his favor considering he was my church’s new minister of music. Aside from popping each of his phonetic cues, he was also the doppelgänger of pro wrestler, Ric Flair, with his toothy grin and his flaxen hair. He knew this and would often imitate his signature “wooo” yell to the thrill of the youth group.

I was not “sold” on Tommy like the others. He was the most car salesman-like of all the church’s staff and as a rule I was always wary of the most popular kid in school. I’m sure that he would have been chosen Mr. Insert the Name of Your High School here when he was teenager. Being single, Tommy was not afraid to flirt with any of the small Baptist church’s female parishioners, not matter the age and no matter his or their relationship status. He quickly began dating the piano player, a single mother of two, much to the dismay of many a widowed or divorced attendee.

After evening church on Sundays, Tommy would often host the youth at his house to play cards, mostly teenage boys. Only at a Southern Baptist church would you hear about the sins of gambling and then hurry off to play poker at the minister’s home. And if not for my wanting to be with my friends, I would have never learned to play Spades or have met Lucy. Lucy was the youngest daughter of Tommy who was visiting for the summer, all the way from Dallas, TX.

For a seventeen-year-old, it was a perfect meet cute. I walked into the kitchen and saw her sitting with her older sister. Each of my friends scrambled to make good first impressions, but I hung back a moment gathering my composure. Admittedly, I was never this cool, but I walked over, held out my hand and said, “Hi Lucy, I’m Ricky”. That’s all it took. We were linked. Lucy was the answer to all my wants at the time. I was the odd ball surrounded by Alan Jackson fans when all that I wanted to do was listen to Bad Religion and They Might Be Giants and then there was Lucy, with her pink hair.

In 1995, her favorite movie was… Drew Barrymore. I mean Drew Barrymore was emblematic of the time, so any movie that had her in it was her favorite. She specifically loved the movie, Mad Love, which costarred Chris O’Donnell. The summary on the back of DVD box said something like “Matt wonders if his love can ‘cure’ Casey’s problems.” It could not. Lucy’s favorite book was Little Girl Lost by yes, Drew Barrymore. A more fitting title could not have been applied to Lucy, a person who was emotionally misshapen by her father’s leaving years earlier.

For three years, our summers were filled with each other’s company. At seventeen, Lucy was the most exciting person that I had ever met. She was nothing like the debutantes of “small town” Georgia and this difference clouded my clarity on our relationship for years. It was a bipolar roller coaster with highs and lows and highs and lows. There was never a real commitment between the two of us, but the potential always seemed magnificent based on our chemistry and our playlists.

Our quote/unquote romance went off and on between other relationships and between visits from Dallas. Summers always seemed to begin just as other relationships were in flux.

Between visits, I spent time at my neighbor’s house. My neighbor’s house wasn’t typical. It wasn’t a house with a pair of siblings across the street in suburban American. I was in rural farm country and the house across the pasture was a foster home with several sets of siblings. As the foster home was on the back lot of a cattle ranch, we all referred to it as The Ranch.

In those days, I was fascinated by this large, non-nuclear family when they moved in as I was an only child without real neighbors for much of my life. They were also my entree into the Southern Baptist church and lifestyle where Tommy, Lucy’s father, was the aforementioned minister of music.

So, for a spell, the social pattern in my life was summers with Lucy and time outside of summers with Lucy was spent with The Ranch. So much of my time was spent with them, I jokingly became an honorary foster child, the Billy Preston to their Beatles. Like Lucy, the foster parents, Mark and Sally were from Texas. Mark was a bowlegged, squat fellow with short gray hair and barrel chest. If you think he looked the part of a Texan, you should have heard him speak. If you could imagine a person with every southern phrase at the ready in their verbal holster, you’d have Mark.

His counterpart, companion, better half, also had short hair, a great smile and was every bit the Texan that Mark was, but she could see through his BS and give it back to him when needed.

They really were a team and from the vantage of inexperience, they were the model family, albeit one who decided to foster way too many children. They had “a calling” as they saw it, to be the bastion in the lives of several young people who did not have steady home lives, to teach them what people today would call “conservative values”, a term that would have been foreign to me at the time. There were kids ranging from ages 12 to 17 and I was friends with all of the ones who were close to my age. There were games, and fights, and movies, and camping, and Shepherd’s Pie (which I had never had before), potato cannons, and a giant gray van that transported everyone far away on crowded trips. It was a culture shock for me, but in the best possible way.

Mark and Sally’s 25th wedding anniversary was quickly approaching and their biological daughter, was planning a surprise party for them at the church. As with all major life events for these Baptists, everything happened with, through and at the church. All their friends, colleagues, children and the church staff would be there to yell surprise.

After the initial jolt of being surprised, the couple of the hour was seated like queen and king in metal folding chairs in fMarkt of a table with their gifts as Tommy pushed his way through the church crowd to sing acapella style to Mark and Sally. In its entirety, with all his forced fluency, Tommy belted Can’t Take My Eyes Off You as popularized to them by Andy Williams. It didn’t get any more “white bread” than this.

You're just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off of you
You'd be like Heaven to touch
I wanna hold you so much
At long last, love has arrived
And I thank God I'm alive
You're just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off of you

Holding Mark’s hand, Sally began to weep. Then she removed her hand from Mark’s to fully cover her face with both hands as she cried. All the while, Tommy smiled; eyes ablaze as he took a knee to serenade her alone. Tommy took her hand, the one Mark had just held, and sang the rest of the song.

My first question was, can Mark not sing? Even if he sang badly, these very personal lyrics wouldn’t be channeled through the voice of a single alpha male gazing into the eyes of his wife. Did Mark perhaps request that Tommy sing this to them/her as it was “their song”? Was it even their song? One thing that I could say that was refreshing about Mark was that he wore his emotions on the outside and by his reaction he looked unperturbed which led me to believe that things were on the up and up, and I was making something out of nothing as this was a very “huggy” church. But none of this really mattered. The next day Lucy arrived for the summer.

So, color me surprised when the first thing that Lucy wanted to do was visit The Ranch. I didn’t understand why this was the first thing item on her vacation itinerary, but it didn’t matter. I was excited to introduce Lucy to my dear friends from across the way and to have her experience a little of what I did day to day when it wasn’t Summer.

We arrived. She put on a less troubled face than she wore in the car and as soon as she walked in, she began searching for something or someone that wasn’t there. Specifically, she was on a mission to meet the matriarch, the foster mother, Sally, who happened to be the only person not there that afternoon.

Sally’s absence threw her, and she was ready to leave after only a few minutes. On the way back, she confided in me that she had a secret. She then instructed me to drive to her father’s house. It was Wednesday afternoon, which meant Tommy was already at the church getting ready for that evening’s service. Lucy walked me back to her father’s bedroom, over to his nightstand and pointed to his answering machine.

To say it was strange to be in his bedroom was and understatement. This was a home that I had been in many times in the evening to play games with my friends from church. And now here I was in his bedroom, in the daytime, a place that would have no doubt been off limits, and I was in this bedroom with his daughter.

“Push Play”, she said. I did as I was told. My curiosity could not be helped.

“Tommy, oh, Tommy. It’s me. I… I… I miss you. It’s so strange to see you every week and still miss you. I know what we’re doing is wMarkg, but I… I can’t help myself.”

“Who was that” I said in my most exasperated manner, not believing that someone would purposefully leave a message like that on a recording device to be found. For anyone this might be salacious, but to hear it on an answering machine belonging to a minister it sounded scandalous. Especially when there was so much preaching about premarital sex and sex outside of marriage and sex. At least they were wise enough not to leave their name.

“Seriously, Lucy. Who was that?”

“You know who it was, Sam. It was that mom at The Ranch.”

Immediately, I realized how I too had been naive about the anniversary charade the night before. Holy Shit! Sally was the caller. Another person who had fallen prey to Tommy’s charismatic persona.

I now knew that Lucy had gone to The Ranch to size Sally up. To glimpse the family that was broken due to her father’s selfishness. Lucy’s reaction to finding out that her dad was having an affair, was to find her out. It was apparent that Tommy had a pattern of behavior, and it was important for Lucy to see what Sally might have in common with the woman that Tommy had cheated on when married to her mom.

I never said a word. Lucy might have. The piano player might have. Slowly rumors began to trickle. Mark and Sally gave up their position at The Ranch and moved back to Texas. They separated for a time, but eventually reconciled. Tommy was eventually “prayed out” of the church, but quickly moved on, was forgiven and took up at another church. You can’t keep a good evangelical/car salesman/pro wrestler look-alike down, as they say.

By the end of that summer, I finally professed to Lucy that I loved her, but she did not love me or was not at a point in her life to receive that love. I’m not sure. I felt relieved for having said it and like Chris O’Donnell’s character, I knew my love couldn’t cure our problems. The next summer, I had moved on, but still sometimes wondered if we ever might get the timing right. When I saw her next, she confided to me that she had recently slept with one of my friends. She said she remembered him from when they were both five years old and that she did it because it made for a great story and how cool was that. It was enough to keep me from wondering any more.

Three years later in college, I received my own voicemail. I drudged my way to my bed, ready to collapse after my comparative lit exam, the last exam before Spring Break. My machine was blinking. I pressed play.

“Hi Sam, it’s me,” she said. “I miss you”

“I’m getting married tomorrow… and I just wanted you to know…

I just wanted you to know that even now I thought it was going to be you and me.”

She never said her name and I never called her back.

Take down your signs form the previous war,
the statues of men, whom you adore.
Your flag is waving through the mud,
but you claim it’s honor, you claim it’s blood.

The generals are dead, the battles’ lost,
but still, it’s others who pay your cost
as we mend the decay in our public space.
You splinter to pieces - you master race.

Take down your signs from the wars before
your clouded cause - your reasons for.
It’s an albatross around your neck
to carry the burden of being oppressed.

But we all see the red you hide
you relics of the countryside.

It is important to understand and acknowledge our own idiosyncrasies. I mention this to illustrate that your environment shapes you in ways you that you may be unaware of.

As an only child, I had time. Time to fill my afternoons with lots of imaginative play. And through this play, I became my own storyteller. My adventures were directed by, written by, and acted by me. I was a seven-year-old Orson Welles, except Rosebud, was well played with Transformer. Along with the creative credits, I was also a mimic, so sound effects were a specialty, and were helpful when keeping myself entertained.

Post college, I was spending a Spring Saturday with one of my closest friends, Stephen. Where I was creative with the stories and visual medium, Stephen was athletic and was a steadfast musician. Teaching music became his career, but baseball was his Zen. We crossed Flowers Road to the field where hobbyists flew RC planes, as we prepared to play catch.

We started throwing the ball and took steps further away from each other until we could no longer carry on an easy conversation and became fixated on the motor mechanics of catch and release. It was a meditation of motion. Ten minutes in Stephen yelled out across the field.

• Do you know you do that?
• Do what?
• You’re making sound effects with your mouth every time you throw the ball.

I had no idea. My habits as an isolated youth had tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, I bet no one knows you do this.

Friday night, my fried Jeff comes over like most Friday’s after work to visit with Regina and me. He left once Atlanta to chase a girl and I came back to Atlanta six months later because I missed a girl, Regina. Now we are all in the same place again, form Voltron, etc. It was great. Friday nights happened with ease. It was only a question of which food joint we’d eat at and which activity we’d pursue. So, will it be La Fonda and Hot Rod or Rusan’s and then Tower Records. We settle with Chinese take-out and watching As Good As It Gets. Jack Nicholson taps the floor on each side of his bedroom shoes several times before slipping them on.

• I used to do what Nicholson just did. I’d tap my shoes on either side of the floor before putting on my shoes.
• Really?
• Yeah, I totally used to be OCD. I mean, I still am, but I don’t think anyone’s actually going to die now if I don’t flip the light switch a certain number of times.

Jeff’s look told me that he was not aware of my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and now suddenly he was. I realized in that instance that I should probably have given more context when dropping personal revelations concerning my mental well-being.

Now that Stephen had a secure job as a full-time band instructor, he bought a new car. He desperately needed an upgrade from the damp Chevy Lumina he had always driven. He picked Jeff and me up and we drove around downtown Atlanta before going to dinner. Stephen was driving and Jeff was naturally given shotgun as he was four inches taller than me. I sort of straddled the middle area in the back and leaned forward so that I could still be a part of the conversation, but Atlanta was and still is a very crowded and busy place and there is very little breathing room or negative space is the visual landscape. Advertisements bombard you at every view. And as Jeff and Stephen were talking sports, I felt fine letting them continue while I got lost looking around. What caught my eye in that moment was a billboard for Rémy Martin. Rémy Martin is a variety of brandy and their billboard left little to the imagination. No one was scantily clad, but the ad implied with little leeway that the man in the middle was about to have sex later with both of the women in the ad at the same time. As Rémy Martin is French we’ll use the appropriate term, a ménage a trois. By no means am I a prude, but in the early 2000s, my rural mind was still a bit bowled over by what was being insinuated on a giant billboard in the middle of the day for all to see. Country mouse meets city mouse advertising. The ad even stated in all caps, THINGS ARE GETTING INTERESTING. Indeed, they were. To point out the boldness of what I was seeing I reached out my hands and put one hand on each of my friends’ shoulders. My left hand on Stephen’s right shoulder. Stephen, the friend who sat a seat between us during Good Will Hunting because it was an empty theater and how would that look. And my right hand on Jeff’s left shoulder. Jeff, who we all teased was a “real man” because he was the physical embodiment of Mr. Clean with his broad stature and shaved head. Remember, my two friends were talking sports and I was having this billboard conversation in my head. I touch them both at the same time to pause their conversation, motion upwards with my head to see a billboard that is already out of view and in an eerie, falsetto voice I say, THREEWAY.

To reiterate my point, try to understand and acknowledge your own idiosyncrasies. Leave the sound effects for playing with your transformers, and when you’re explaining your mental illness, give a little context and by all means, before you deliver your punchline, tell the joke.

It’s March 14^th. The next day would be a turning point in Roman history. 60 some compatriots in the senate meet to hone their plans that would seal the fate of Julius Caesar and to fulfill the prophecy of the soothsayer. Brutus is the last of the familiar mob to plunge his dagger into the body of his once closest companion. Beware the Ides of March, Caesar was warned. Beware. No good will come. Your heart will stop.

Like Julius Caesar, I’m not a believer in the words of mediums, mystics, or modern con men and women like John Edward or Sylvia Brown, but even Great Caesar’s Ghost would have to have taken notice in the coincidence of his death’s timing and the preternatural warning that was given to him. He joked about it, as would I if given a warning from a psychic.

I’ve heard that time is a flat circle and all, but from my perspective it’s a straight line. It’s only looking back that we might be allowed to believe in something like destiny. Many forget time’s linear nature and our propensity for noticing patterns. I’m a natural skeptic, save the year that I was engaged to a religious zealot and believed that I might one day become a preacher, but thankfully the relationship did not last. Al of the beliefs that I thought I had and all of the signs that I thought I saw were simply how I framed my personal narrative.

Growing up in my house, it’s surprising that I am a skeptic. As a kid my father was a straight-laced Methodist, but in my mid-twenties he changed his religious spots and became a hard-right evangelical who now attends a doomsday church were the end of the world is preached from the pulpit.

My mother was never religious, but she had always been a bit daring when it came to being-open. When I was younger her openness sometimes frightened me. She was prone to trying things like automatic handwriting, dabbling in palm reading and practicing numerology. I laughed, and probably rolled my eyes when Mom brought home her first Himalayan salt lamp and extolled its health benefits for purifying the air.

Personal coincidences, not fate, have appeared in my life as well, at least in retrospect. After completing college with a degree in design, I had almost given up on finding a job within my designated field. But being from a small town had its privileges. I knew everyone and had a reputation as an artist and now I was an artist with a degree. And even though it was not a teaching degree, I had been offered a job at my high school to teach art. As I was walking in to sign the provisional contract, I received a call from a company in Atlanta who said that they would love to hire me. I left the superintendent’s office, embarrassed that I had to turn the teaching job down in person, but relieved that I would now be entering my career instead of falling back into an environment that would one day suffocate me (not teaching, the town).

I remember meeting Regina, my wonderful wife and closest companion, on my first day of work. When I introduced myself on that first day, she looked at me with daggers in her eyes insisting that we had met during the group interview a week and a half before. Unfortunately, she was correct.

I was not initially interested in Regina, not because she wasn’t beautiful, but mainly because she wasn’t interested in me. When my mom finally saw a picture of her, she immediately inquired, “Why aren't you dating that one?”

The reasons that I gave were (1) I worked with her and (2) having heard she attended church regularly I deemed that she was too religious for my taste considering my last relationship. Six months later, the two reasons faded to the background and we were sneaking looks, notes, and kisses at work and our secretive office romance was really only a secret to us.

In 2007, after a 6 ½ year courtship, we were married. Thankfully, I took the call and did not become a teacher.

My grandfather, Mom’s dad, was sick. By the beginning of 2006, Mom knew he was dying. Being a teacher of literature, she was and has always been good at ciphering the meaning and symbols in her dreams in a literary fashion. That January, she had a peculiar dream that she then related to me.

At a restaurant, my mom, dad, and I sat around a table. The server brought a white frosted birthday cake and said specifically that today was March 3rd and that we were all here to celebrate a birthday. Now, in the dream Mom became increasingly annoyed because she knew that her father was dying.

In her waking life, she was convinced that her father would die in February. His grandfather had died in February. His step-father had died in February and even his father had died in February. When February passed, she was a bit relieved, a bit surprised, and obviously mistaken. Three days later she received a call from wintery Jonesport, Maine, informing her that her father, my Pop, had passed away. It was March 3rd. Then she knew that the celebration in her dream was not really a birthday, but a ceremony marking the exact date of his death, or so we thought.

Years later, my son was anticipated by his doctors to be born in February. It happened to be a Leap Year, and Regina and I were both hoping for the lottery of birth dates, but February 29th passed us. Early on March 2^nd Regina went into labor. I called mom telling her and my dad not to come up until after Henry had been born. And like any self-respecting grandparents to be, they did not listen. We all expected that Henry would arrive that evening, but Regina’s labor lasted through a Friend’s marathon, a severe thunderstorm and 2 hospital shifts. Mom and Dad waited for nearly fourteen hours in the waiting room and finally through the use of what would be equivalent to industrial baby pliers, Henry Elliott Mitchell took his first tiny gasp of air at 11:01 on March 3rd. Six years later my Mom’s dream about a birthday on March 3^rd  finally made perfect sense and Henry would be tied in numbers to a man whom I loved and admired.

March 14^th, 2001 began as a typical Wednesday evening, but it would be a turning point in my life. Before we were married and even before we were the secretive couple at work, Regina and I were merely two reluctant friends. We had been working together now for about 6 months and despite our rough start we had become close. We shared tastes in music, in the arts and both loved B-Horror movies like The Evil Dead films. And there were many a night where we would get drunk on cheap table wine and watch VHS copies of movies that we had recorded off of television. We had just finished watching “So, I Married and Axe Murderer”, when we realized that our long evening had once again turned into the next morning. And like our first meeting, I’m certain that I still annoyed her, but was confident that our feelings were mutual otherwise. With our guards down from too much wine, I encouraged her to reveal to me what was obvious, but was too scared to express myself. Like a dagger, Regina’s words plunged straight to the center of my being. “You know we’re dating, right?”, she said. But I knew she meant “I love you”. I looked up at the “Nat Geo” bird clock on the wall and for the sake of prosperity I noted the time. Working side by side with her would be different and that would be ok and that if we had a future together (and we did) this would be the moment it began. It was 1:02 AM, March 15^th. Beware the Ides of March, I thought. Your heart will stop, but in reality, it only beat more strongly.

This story aired Monday morning, November 22, 2021 on the Sundial Writers Corner on 89.3, WLRH

In the autumn of her life, Louise Bevel had short, dark gray, curly hair, sported high waisted slacks and rarely wore a smile. Even though she was of average size, she gave the appearance of someone much larger and more broad-shouldered. She was no nonsense country, whereas her best friend, Margaret, was petite and a bit refined. You see Margaret was my grandmother. She had been a teacher, been married to a lawyer and played piano for her church, but Louise was the epitome of rough. She wasn’t prone to much dialogue and when she did speak, her collective amount of words didn’t add to much. She would most often grumble an “hmm, mmm” in response to someone else. This was the picture of Louise that most people knew.

Even in her eulogy, the minister couldn’t paint the softest of images, he said that anyone who knew her would say she was gruff. But despite her gruffness, Louise could be tender, but only as tender as Louise could be. On occasion, she would baby sit me when my grandmother could not. One time I remember looking up at her and saying “Ouise, I love ooo, do ooo love me?”

And instead responding like most people by saying, “Of course Sam, I love you”, she looked down, and in her brusque fashion said, “Sam, everyone loves ooo.”

Coincidentally, my grandmother and Louise both had lost their husbands in their thirties. My grandfather, Roy, was killed when a train ran into his truck as he was coming back from his family’s dairy farm and Louise’s husband had had a heart attack. Neither remarried. When my grandmother was asked why she never married again, she would always say that she could never replace the best. When Louise was asked the same question, I imagine her response might have been, “What Margaret said”.

Instead of remarrying, they chose to remain single and used each other for companionship. This included vacations, dinners, and of course, trips to the movies.

Before Rotten Tomatoes, I would get short summations from them about what movie they had seen the night before at our small one screener, The Ritz. Reviews were always mixed, but one movie that they both agreed they liked was, Ron Howard’s 1984 comedy, Splash.

For those of you too young to remember, Splash was the story of Allen Bauer, played by Tom Hanks, a produce business owner in New York and how he finds his soulmate, but she just happens to be a real-life mermaid. The movie begins with a sepia toned flashback where an eight-year old Hanks instinctively jumps off a small sight-seeing boat off the coast of Cape Cod even though he cannot swim. He sees a blonde girl of the same age in the ocean and realizes that with her he can now breathe underwater. Hanks is quickly pulled back to the surface, and as an adult he believes his experience with the young mermaid to be a hallucination.

When Splash came to home-video I was about seven. If you believe my embarrassing misconception about the movie was that I thought mermaids were real, then you’d be dead wrong. But I was in awe of how innovative and lucky the filmmakers were to have started filming the movie twenty years prior to capture the flashback scene between Hanks and Darryl Hannah when they were only kids. It never even occurred to me that the director had hired two different actors to play the same character.

My greater misconception was that Grandma and Louise were just two old women whose lives were compartmentalized to enjoying movies, cruises and food, but companionship is nothing without a little adventure. Evident of their deep friendship was the fact that Louise would ride around with my grandmother forcing their way into other people’s business. Perhaps inspired by Grandma’s love for Harlequin Romances mixed with and unhealthy amount of soaps and Divorce Court, they both became sleuths. An outsider would have called them busybodies, but since it’s my own grandma, I’ll say that she and Louise were amateur extra marital detectives. On a whim, Grandma and Louise would chariot around a rumored victim in an affair and stalk the two-timing husband and try to catch him in the act. Sometimes this would take weeks. Many times, they would give the aggrieved wife the evidence and/or the courage that she needed to move on with her life.

I can imagine, my grandma, binoculars around her neck, behind the steering wheel, moving through rural Georgia. Louise is in the passenger seat, lit cigarette in her mouth, taking notes and occasionally grumbling, “What a bastard,” while a bewildered wife looks on wildly from the backseat of Grandma’s green Chevy Nova, wondering what in the ever-living hell had she gotten herself into.

When she turned 80, my grandmother was admitted to Providence Care Nursing home. After a year at her new residence something peculiar happened. My dad went by for his daily visit with her and what he found was not the cheerful mother that he usually saw; the one who was either reading her Harlequins or watching the Braves game. Grandma was slumped over in her bed, sobbing into her pillow.

“Mama, what is it? What’s wrong?”, he said.

“Oh, Louise!”, Grandma said. “Louise is dead!”

My father assured her that Louise was very much alive.

Maybe it was a premonition by someone who was so connected to another person, but the next day Louise did indeed die. My grandmother was heartbroken.

Two years later, my grandmother died from her own heart failure.

Soulmate doesn’t always mean the person that you’ve fallen in love with. Sometimes a soul mate is the person who you’ve grown with the most. Soulmates can be forged by experience. And I truly believe that Grandma and Louise were partners in crime, partners in life, and were most assuredly soulmates.

For my grandmother, if heaven exists, I imagine it in sepia tones and instead of pearly gates, I see her being ferried to heaven in a small tour boat. She has been transformed to a young girl of eight. She looks out in the water and sees another young girl with short dark curls, swimming freely in the water, a high waisted mermaid. It’s Louise. Grandma jumps in, they swim toward each other, they clasp one another’s hands and my grandmother can breathe once again.

The following piece was performed at The Southern Fried Film Festival (The Orion Amphitheater) on June 9, 2022.

Should I hand over my baby to the President? This is a question that I actually once asked myself. Some questions are easy to answer, ala final Jeopardy questions concerning Netflix’s Derry Girls. In retrospect, my “Should I hand my baby over to the president?” was more philosophical in nature, more akin to Tolstoy’s Three Questions.

In Tolstoy’s parable, a king believed that if he had the answers to three specific questions, he would be successful in all that he did.

He journeys to find the wisest to answer his questions, and in his quest he aides a hermit who is revealed to be the unlikely vessel of this knowledge. I imagine the king’s surprise to finding out that the hermit would be his mentor was much like Luke Skywalker meeting Yoda for the first time. Why does he speak backwards or why is he green?

The king’s three questions were these:

• Who are the most important people?
• What is the most important thing to be doing?
• When is the most important time?

The hermit lays out his truths and the king leaves better for the wisdom he was given. But the query, “Should I hand my baby over to the president?” was not one for a hermit, or even a Jedi.

When my son, Henry, was one, Jimmy Carter was 89. When Jimmy, as I’ll call him for now on, wasn’t leading efforts to eradicate endemics like Guinea-worm disease, or building homes with Habitat for Humanity, he could be seen teaching Sunday school at Marantha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia and by simply signing up on the church’s website, anyone could reserve their seat to hear him speak.

On a Sunday in June, we headed out for our semi-local pilgrimage. In tow were Regina, my wife, Henry, my mom, and our family friend, Linda.

We were all very excited to meet this compassionate luminary. He was from our state. We had read his books. He had the most robust philanthropic post presidency in U.S. history.

Linda even had a personal connection. Linda’s daughter was gay. And when the news came out in the early 90s that she was, the so-called friends at her church ostracized her and gossiped behind her back. It was heartbreaking for her to lose her friends, but even more so to see how her daughter was treated for being herself. Linda left the church, but never left her personal faith.

Years later, her daughter suddenly died from an aneurysm. In seeking answers, Linda wrote Jimmy. And instead of getting a form letter back from the office of a former President, Linda received a heartfelt, handwritten letter from him. It became a prized possession. She even kept it folded inside her family bible.

In contrast to Linda’s earnest sojourn, I was excited to meet the president because of a different reason. I had always loved the idea that all people in the world were connected to each other on an average of six, or fewer, social connections. And by virtue of a individual’s fame, the fewer connections it took. The idea had even been turned into a party game that I bet everyone here as heard of; Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. It’s where you connect any actor to Kevin Bacon via shared movies. Here’s an example. 22 years agon, I was an extra in a little movie, called Road Trip. So, me to Fred Ward in Road Trip. Fred Ward to Kevin Bacon in Tremors; two steps. I admit this may not have been the right motivation for someone seeking to hear a sage. My wife even suggested it might have been… shallow, BUT it would be thrilling to say that my son, Henry, and I would now both be only a few degrees from almost every modern leader, celebrity, artist, and athlete in the entire world.

After a thorough pat down by the Secret Service, we found our seats on pew near the middle of the small sanctuary. The church’s young preacher walked out and gave the attendees a few housekeeping rules for decorum-sake and then Jimmy entered through the front and began his lesson, part spiritual observation, part history class.

After the sermon, everyone who was visiting was given the chance to have their photo taken with Jimmy and his wife Rosalynn. The rules were very clear, we were not to shake hands or touch them, we were not to hog their time, and we were not to reenter the line if we left.

Linda was ahead of us and after several people had their photos taken, it was her turn. She had the rare, beautiful opportunity to thank someone for their kind words.

My connection to the world based on Six Degrees of Separation was coming upon us, when Henry took it upon himself to soil the last diaper that we had on us. We had already used our spare during the service and didn’t bring our diaper bag with us as to streamline our entrance into the church. I quickly sized up our distance to the front to see if I had time to run back to the car to change him and then I remembered the third rule and the seriousness of this rule being enforced considering the presence of the Secret Service. THOUGH SHALL NOT REENTER THE LINE!

Linda was finishing her conversation when the usher called, NEXT!

We walked up to Carters, said hello, and then it happened. Jimmy reached out for Henry to hold him for the photo.

I paused for a moment, unsure of what to do. SHOULD I hand over a very saggy and heavy Henry to a seemingly frail 89-year-old, former President of the United States? The Secret Service had checked for explosives, but not this kind. I was afraid there would be leak, but what is a dad to do when a former president offers to hold your son for a photo, making the connection of Six Degrees that much more solid. I gently passed Henry to Jimmy. Luckily, no leaks.

And yes, I guess you could say that I was successful in introducing my young one to a President for the sake of a connected experience, one that he will obviously be incapable of remembering save this story, and a photo for evidence.

And as I looked to my left and to my right, seconds before the photo was taken, to see the people that I was with and the familiar peanut farmer holding my son, my intentions of forcing a superficial socially connected bridge had crumbled away to live in this very surreal, but enjoyable moment.

Tolstoy might be pleased to hear that his example of mindfulness and the answers to his parable’s questions were unintentionally being acted out that day, even hours before meeting the President.

• The most important people are the ones you are with.
• The most important thing to be doing is to do good for and by those people.
• The most important time is now.

I received a call from Linda’s husband a few weeks ago informing me that Linda had passed away. It wasn’t a surprise as we all new she had been ill. I immediately thought of our trip to meet Jimmy that June morning and how much that experience meant to her. And she would have loved to have been here with you tonight.

I’m not religious, although I do believe in the virtues of communion, kindness, and attentiveness. Yoda said, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter,” and I’m fairly certain that Tolstoy, Jimmy, and Linda would agree.

My only first-hand experience with childbirth before 2012 had been in my garage as an 11-year-old. I sat with my dad’s dog, whose name I don’t remember because there had been so many. She was in labor with her first litter and as I stroked her head to keep her calm, I kept repeating what any caring and sensitive child of 11 would say to a dog giving birth in the family garage, “Good girl, c’mon girl, you can do it girl”.

So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that when I used the same lines during my wife’s labor, “Good girl, c’mon girl, you can do it girl,” my left hand rightfully received a crushing squeeze and I was given the worst side eye of my life.

There had been expectations with childbirth, like I expected to be ready to support Regina having taken several birthings classes with her. No one warned me that I shouldn’t try to calm and comfort her as I would one of my dad’s many Blueticks. 

But any uncomfortable missteps were soon forgiven as we witnessed the best of humanity in the form of baby with a mop of brown hair, blinking eyes, ten fingers and ten perfect long toes like my own.

We all have expectations or at least things that we have grown used to. The sun rises and sets. Your parents will always be married. Santa Claus is real.

My mom was always home from school in the summers as she was a teacher, which was good. She and I were the two in the family of three that were most alike. We could have easily passed as siblings when viewing our first grade school pictures and we have always communicated in a similar fashion. Mom would take me everywhere, from places that I wanted to visit (K-Mart), places I did not want to visit (the fabric store) and to my grandparent’s house up the road within walking distance. We would talk the entire summer on these rides and walks much how I now talk with my own son. The only gap was when my dad came home because then it was time to hear about his day at the mill.

In the summer after second grade, Mom had begun laying the clues out to help me deduce that there was no Santa. As a teacher, she had seen the torment that came from being the child who held on to myths too long. In the midst of drawing and talking that summer, I looked up and bluntly asked if there really was a Santa. Mom gently replied, No, your father and I are your Santa. 

Proud that I had put the clues together correctly, but still a bit exasperated, I then said “Great! I guess you’re going to tell me there’s no Easter Bunny either”

She smiled and playfully asked if I still believed in the Tooth Fairy, to which I replied with only an eye roll.

Unbeknownst to me, Mom had been married before. Instead of finding out by accident by her family, she decided to get in front of a potentially upsetting discovery.  She started dropping clues again in  conversations, so that I could unearth and digest this new news more easily. It was about a man. As Santa was real and then he wasn’t, this new man was non existent and then he was.

I don’t quite remember the details of the exact evidence she presented, but I put things together quickly enough and asked her the question that I was led to.

“Mom, were you married before?”

Yes, she gently replied.

I dared not ask any further questions in fear of what other truths might be waiting to wrestle me away from my completely comfortable world. My concrete foundation was beginning to feel rickety. But in that moment, a seed of wonder and doubt had been planted.

• Do I have an estranged sibling?
• Siblings? Plural?
• How would that work?
• Mothers usually get full custody.
• Oh, no!
• Mothers usually DO get full custody.
• Is the man in the backyard my real father?

I walked with my heart in my head to our backyard kennel, thinking this could explain things. I love my Dad, but even at ten, I felt a bit disconnected from him. Maybe, biologically, I wasn’t his. I saw Dad and nearly cried thinking that he wasn’t “mine.”

A day before my 30th birthday Dad shattered his leg in a horsing accident. His recovery was slow, so I moved home to help physically take care of his collection of animals instead of mom, who was still working at the time. His hygiene became somewhat lacking due to being immobile and due to a mounting depression.

I came into our living room one evening and noticed him reclined on the couch, his unadorned feet hanging off of the armrest.

“Dad, do you need me to cut your nails?”

“No, I got it,” he said.

I had first noticed his neglected toe nails, but then I could see his long, slender, pale white feet. Toes that could hold a pencil. The round bundle of muscle below the ankle that almost appeared blue because of their closeness to the surface. If my feet had a mirror, then these would be their reflection.

Dad had my feet or rather I had his.

And this is when any question or insecurities about my heritage as a child fled my mind. My father and I are dissimilar is many ways. And although I have not followed in his footsteps with how I view the world, when I look at my own feet, it is a literal reminder that we are bound together.

The following story was performed live for Flying Monkey Arts Theatre on August 26, 2017. The theme for the evening was “Umbraphiles”. 

Dear Mr. Nimoy,

I wish that I had written you when you were alive, but I finally felt it time to clarify an event that happened on Labor Day weekend, 2009 in Atlanta.

I know how it must have looked, but I swear that I’m not a rabid fan. You see I didn’t even appreciate your work until I was an adult. In fact, I resented you for a long time. It had nothing to do with you per say, but more Mr. Spock.

You see Mr. Nimoy, I grew up a Star Wars fan. I’d like to say that I was a Han Solo type: good with a blaster, could hold my liquor and was charming with the princesses, but in reality, I was a flop haired, whiny farm boy. I grew up in the country, watered coon hounds from reused pickle barrels and shoveled cow manure for spending money. Yes, I was a Luke Skywalker and not the cool grizzled, close mouthed one we’ve seen in The Force Awakens. No shots lined up at the cantina for me, only Aunt Beru’s blue milk.

Of course, at the time I was unaware of the stigma of young Luke. I was in love with the romance, the idea of knights, aliens, fast ships and light sabers. What’s that? Why am I rambling to you about Star Wars? I’m getting to it.

Unlike today, Star Wars could not be found everywhere, but guess what could be found… Star Trek. There were reruns of your show that I watched, but it was the equivalent of getting cube steak when what you really craved was bacon wrapped filet medallions. I did however like the new show, it was… good. And this Jean Luc guy was like an Atticus Finch in space. Pre “Go Set a Watchmen” of course, but luckily you passed before that revelation.

In my youth, Star Trek and Star Wars were very different religions. Think classic ideological beefs like Southern Baptists vs. Catholics, Leah Remini vs Tom Cruise or Westboro Baptist Church vs… everyone. There is no reason that a mutual love can not exist between these fandoms, but the older zealous population, my uncle included, tried to brainwash the young by indoctrination.

My point is this. In my heart I was Rebel Alliance. So, when I was in the hallways of my 9th grade school, surviving socially on a thread, I was mortified when one of the high school juniors called out “Hey, Spock! You dropped your keys” due to the fact that my house keys slipped through an open hole in my jeans pocket and the fact that when I was 14 I had a bowl cut and could have been your illegitimate son.

This was enough to make any teenager with aspirations of climbing the social ladder cringe and at the same time resent you, my doppelgänger dad.

But Mr. Nimoy, our journey together is not over. Years later, my appreciation for Star Wars and all things George Lucas began to wane. I started devouring more media than what my younger self would have prescribed. Doctor Who, Firefly, Next Gen, BSG, Douglas Adams, Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, and yes, even your show, the original Star Trek.

Set your phasers to stunning, wouldn’t you know it, I fell in love. I was unashamed. And then, you were back in the public eye in a way that I’m sure you hadn’t experienced in many years. Your cameo in J.J. Abrams reboot was charming and grounded the entire Kelvin timeline. To boot, thanks to a Terry Gross interview, I learned that you were an artist. A real artist, not a Jim Carey with a swinging harness and a paint brush, but a really talented photographer. Your photos of full-bodied nude women poised as objects of desire, lust and beauty was eye opening, empowering, subversive and thoughtful.

Anyway to the point at hand. It was 2009. My friend Jason had a press pass for the small, now defunct, paper in Atlanta and had been assigned to photograph DragonCon, the largest fan run sci-fi convention in the nation. Being Jason, he invited as many of his friends to “assist him” so we could attend at no charge. We now had access to officially photograph as many b-celebrities as we could stand or if we’re being honest, recognize.

The day of the con, I found out that you and actors of your cult standing were highly sought out and heavily guarded. My friends said it couldn’t be done with our small credentials, but by the end of the afternoon I had convinced your handler to let my friend and me snap a photograph of you. Several of us had made of game out of photographing celebrities. In my heart I was a collector and this was akin to scoring rare collectible Topps cards, you know,  the kind that came wrapped in wax paper with brittle bubble gum paddle.

As I bent over my camera bag, making sure that everything was in order, your handler gave the signal that it was time and waved the group of photographers over. The wave was meant for me. I was the one who spoke to your handler. I was the one who waited patiently near the kiosk while the other photographers and small-time journalist shot photos of the parade and the likes of lesser celebrities. I couldn’t believe this. I rushed over to the huddled mass of cameras and nudged my way through right as your arm left Shatner’s shoulder and right as your smile faded from your face. Your face. I’ll never forget it. From warm and collegial to hard and severe in less than it take to go from impulse power to warp factor 7. You looked up, made eye contact and I can only assume that you thought was that I was an ordinary fan on the tailcoats of these professionals who had not earn the right to photograph you.

You then turned to your business manager and said WHO IS THIS, but all that I heard in my head was WHO THE FUCK IS THIS?

In that moment, my hopes fell and my arms went up. CLICK.

I slumped away feeling genuinely down on myself that I had upset you and that your impression of me was that of a crazed fan. And what was worse, I knew my photo was inferior to that of my peers. It took at least a day and a return trip home for me get out of my own head and realize that although I would never forget the interaction, that you would never remember it. And that’s the crux. It’s a fantasy. In the end, maybe all fantasies about meeting celebrities is about you becoming personal friends. I can see how this is intoxicating and to others dangerous and I’m glad that meeting you broke me of that.

In the end, I’m a collector and what I didn’t realize was that you gave me a rare gift that day. After DragonCon, my friend, the other photographers and I shared our photos of you with your arm around William Shatner. There you were, Leonard Nimoy, smiling over and over and over. I had the rare 1 in 5 photograph of you pissed. Finger pointing. If I had to caption the picture as it were a collectible trading card like the ones from my childhood, it would read, Mr Spock says who the fuck is this guy.

Mr. Nimoy, I have not always been, but I forever shall be your fan.

Yours,

Sam Mitchell