NARRATIVES OF NATHAN
the son of and best of friends to David L. Lewis
*****
Best introduction might be this: Eight years in and there are still days when something will happen or be said and my first response is “ask Nathan”. Over the years his mother and I have told many stories about Nathan, the things he did, something he said, the child he was. Lest the narratives of Nathan be lost, I have gathered a few which were important to me.
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We should have had an inkling of what was to come the night he was born. The father’s waiting room was about 30-feet from delivery room. I finally convinced myself it could not be my wife screaming like that, must be somebody else. Not sure if he ever caused that much pain to anyone again.
During his first night he “jaundiced”. To save his life an Intern from Peru, who had seen the same thing happen in his home country, ordered a complete exchange of the baby’s blood. A nurse told me the doctor had risked his license to save our baby. His mother still thinks they used her blood. I have a more likely theory: They filled him with blood taken from some ‘galaxy hitchhiker’ from the future (he’ll get both jokes).
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When he was four years old, and a very good boy, all he wanted for Christmas was an “Evel Kneivel”. This was a wind-up motorcycle toy which apparently all four year olds desired that year. We looked everywhere and no one had any left. On Christmas Eve, in desperation, I stopped at a Western Auto store (yes, it was that long ago). They had one last such toy, a knock-off. The clerk asked if Nathan was old enough to read? He could not, and he never knew any difference. He (with a certain big brother’s help) broke the darn thing, ending Nathan’s interest in cars – and initiating such interest in big brother.
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By Second grade he had learned to read. We happened to live just up the block from the town library. When I first filled out a library card application and sent him off by himself to get card he brought it back. The librarian didn't believe it was really my signature.
He would come home from school and rush down to the library. One day he came home with about ten books on American Indians. I asked, "teacher talk about Indians today?" He replied, "Yes. how did you know?"
By time we left that town he'd read every book on his reading level; and, I'm sure, many above his "level"
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About the sixth grade we enrolled him a new school. As part of the process he was to take a reading placement test. I suggested to the teacher it would save time to start at 12th grade level and work her way down. He missed one question on first level tested. A question for which he would have needed some exposure to Calculus. He didn’t know Calculus, just that a knowledge of it was needed. Too bad, if he’d known it was coming he would have found ten books to read and master the subject.
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During his middle school years we went to one of those ‘parent-teacher conference’ nights. Roaming around from teacher to teacher I noticed the Librarian sitting all alone. I asked her if she knew our son Nathan? Barely looking up she replied, “Skinny kid, reads a lot?”
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My last, and probably favorite story is of when Nathan was about seven years old. There was a lot going on in our lives just then, including a “big deal” on the part of an evangelical group to get children “saved”. Exactly from what they were to be saved I was not sure.
As I put him to bed one night Nathan said, “Daddy, I got saved today.” I certainly did all I could to encourage him in this as I “tucked him in” and kissed him goodnight.
The next night as I put Nathan to bed he asked me, “Will those people be back tonight?”
I asked, “what people?”
“There were a bunch of people in my room last night.”
“What were they doing?”
“Just singing some church songs”.
“What did they look like?”
“They all had on long white dresses”
"I don’t know if they’ll come back", I told him. "But there is nothing to worry about. Just tell daddy if you see them again". If he ever did he never mentioned it, except in how he lived life.
There certainly could be more tales told, and it is possible all the Nathan narratives will never all be told.
The reader is invited to add their own narratives in comments,
theDaddy!
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