Today would have been Stephen’s 30th birthday. In this year of newborns in our families -- Mila and Georgia and Klein -- and Dad’s 80th, I’m remembering our little boy who surely would have aged into a handsome thirty-something. Stephen came into our lives fifty years after his grandpa, bursting with his curiosity about nature and space. Naturally, the duck pond at Mark’s hospital and the University of Florida science museum were favorite spots. The simulated cave at the museum brought out his vivid imagination, and he was always busy with campouts in the family room and hikes with doggy in our wooded backyard. For Stephen, doggy was fully alive and able to smell the flowers. I guess this open mind led him later to the Discovery Channel and his readings into different religions. It certainly made him a lively companion for Elizabeth and Matthew when they came along. But I remember Stephen’s most frequent question was “What’s that sound?” He had a discerning ear. He would come to love the John Williams’ scores of Star Wars and Indiana Jones and the music of an incredible mix of bands from The Beatles to The Black Keys. He shared a love of music and movies with Matthew and Elizabeth that always led to spin-offs of memorized lines. Where are you now, Stephen, when a new Stars Wars is about to be released? Or when we look up the holiday recipe for Clarence’s mulled wine, which you compared to “the milk of human kindness” in Scrooge? Or when the new Exodus movie comes out? After all, when it snowed in Austin, you texted to Elizabeth that morning, “What the... Is it manna?” I could get lost in all the funny moments between Stephen and Elizabeth and Matthew. And all the tender moments when he was thoughtful to Mark and me. I don’t ever want to forget them. It’s a mother’s job to keep a child’s memory alive, so forgive me, family, for the sadness you may feel. It will always be a part of our joy, having loved Stephen. And that brings me to Interstellar, the movie I recently saw with Dad. A critic wrote that, for all its pyrotechnics, it’s a movie about love -- “love from generation to generation, and across time and space.” For the father and daughter separated from each other, the pull of love is as powerful as gravity. They feel mystical connections, for “the whole world is alive and communicating in ways we do not fully understand.” Maybe people will leave the theater with “a radical openness to strange truth,” as the critic predicts. I imagine you smiling at that, Stephen. Happy Birthday. We’re remaining open-minded and strong for you, and we’re loving you, always.
