Bryson
I have been remiss, in this space that serves me in a way I'm not really sure of but that I appreciate, in noting the birth of a boy.
Bryson Bernardin was born three weeks ago, and he stands (so to speak) as the last of a line: I suspect that no more of my contemporaries will procreate (although you never know; a couple of glasses of wine and New Year's Eve have produced surprises, we all know this), and it will be left to Generation Y and Z (and whatever) to carry on. In other words, we'll be moving into grandchild stages soon, and Bryson will be the baby.
It's not that I don't know people still in their childbearing prime. It's just that a line is drawn at some point, by nature and hormones and convenience, and a wall is there and we can be friendly and love each other and still one remembers Watergate and one doesn't, and so you separate a little. Babies are done for us.
So Bryson is special, as are his parents. I met Jim and Lisa Bernardin 10 years ago or so, when Lisa was the Christian Education director at the church I went to and Jim was Mr. Serenity. I know Jim got angry but I never saw it; he floated around us, observing and gracious and completely calm, while Lisa railed and ranted about the needs of children and youth and I just loved them both.
It was Lisa, actually, who pulled me from a five-year shell of working at home. I went to a church potluck, my job to score some pizza while Julie picked up Beth at soccer, and suddenly I found myself in a room of strangers and I panicked. I'd lost most all social skills. I was uncomfortable, and I shrank back in a corner.
"Has anyone seen my family?" I mumbled.
Lisa swept by, carrying dishes to the kitchen, and she would have none of this crap.
"We are all your family, Chuck," she said, and walls crumbled and I became a person again. About time.
There were some church politics and growing up and Jim and Lisa eventually moved away, returned to their roots in California, where they bought a house and invited me several times to visit and had a baby, Wyeth. Last summer they moved back North, and when we visited last fall we found out about the Impending Visitor. And now he's here. Welcome, Bryson.
I wrote a column last spring about the wedding of one of my daughter's friends coinciding with the birth of my cousin's daughter. I speculated, then, on marriage and on this little girl and her life to be, and mostly I wished I could capture it in a time capsule, save the world of her birth for the world she would inherit, just to give her a clue. I conjectured a bit; this is part of it:
She will be the class of 2021, and the Twenties will be her 20s.
The first U.S. President she is really aware of will be elected in 2016. Somewhere along the line, at least one of them will be a woman, jettisoning that particular bugaboo once and for all.
When she is in her 30s, Bill Clinton will be buried, probably yapping to the end, charming and infuriating, the last president of the 20th century.
When she's 50, Keanu Reeves will get a Lifetime Achievement award at the Oscar ceremony, mostly because he outlived Matt Damon. "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" will be incomprehensible to her.
Maybe her parents will write down what was happening in the world when she was born. Iraq. Globalization. New diseases. Strange weather.
Maybe they'll mention that she entered this world as Katharine Hepburn left it, 96 years young.
And if she takes care of herself, eats her vegetables and crosses with the light, when she's 96 Madelynne will see a new century turn.
Our world will be dust then, but it welcomes you today, Madelynne Martin, 7 pounds, 3 ounces. We've given you most of a century to play with, so you go, girl.
I welcome Bryson Bernardin, too. And I'd hope, when I'm an old man and he's a young one, that I'd know him and remember what life was like when he was born. It'd be nice to give him a summary and not be slobbering at the same time. Memories are everything.
We have them. We have pictures, and for some of us videos and audio recordings. We have slices of life. But some of us do it better.
Jim Bernardin happens to be a well-respected illustrator of children's books. Google his name if you want. You'll find lots of titles.
And some of them won't ring a search engine bell. Some of them were just paydays, work that pulled out the pen and paid the bills, as so many of us freelancers know.
Jim has occasionally put a familiar face in his books, a real live person whose looks are captured in a character that lives only in fiction, his attempt (I'm guessing) at versimilitude and realism. Real people look like real people.
And years ago, drawing a cover for a paperback version of a well-selling children's book, he decided to find some real people. He took photographs and posed them, and now all these years later it remains a gift to me.
If we could only save them some other way, keep them in holography or digitize them or go back, just go back for a moment to remember. But we can't, and that's the way it should be. I thank him now, though, and Lisa, and I welcome Bryson and say hi to Wyeth and I remember.
The background is the view from our church, overlooking Puget Sound. The shed is an invention. The boy is in college now. The bike was probably another invention.
The girl is mine, 8 years ago, ages ago. She is much older now, and wiser, and different, and better, and, thanks to Jim and memories, still mine.
5:20:24 PM 
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