You must have been about four years old, just a little younger than you were in this picture. You were going through a phase where you acted up in church rather regularly, and so we had fallen into the habit of one of us hauling you out and walking around the church grounds while listening with one ear to the service being broadcast out into the courtyard.

We would chat, you and I, as we strolled the grounds and one day we found ourselves contemplating a large mural of the Holy Family. It was a pretty traditional grouping: Mary and Joseph gazing lovingly at the baby Jesus, all equipped with their standard, Deity-Issued halos.

We considered that for a while, and I turned to you and asked, “Did you look like that when YOU were a baby?”

You regarded me pityingly, pointed at the baby’s halo and said with all the indignation you could muster with a four-year-old’s lisp: “Of couwrse not! I don’t have a wight bulb!”

I didn’t realize it, but this was only the first of thousands of interesting, off-beat, sudden-left-turn-with-no-signal conversations you and I have shared over the years. You have a surprisingly mature viewpoint and an unexpected (and uncanny) knack for immediately grasping the heart of an issue. You frequently toss off wise bon mots as you simultaneously reject the seriously metaphysical conversations that spawn them as “boring” as you queue up another Avatar rerun to watch.

I can’t wait to see what kind of man you become. I can’t wait to see what kind of conversations we’re having ten years from now.

And know that to me, you will always have at least a little bit of a ‘wight bulb.’

Happy birthday!

© E.S. Evans 2010