Michael Murray

Just Over A Year Ago

I often wonder what Jones will remember of me when he is a man.

Sometimes, I wish I could construct his memories.

The three of us are out in the woods. A perfect autumn day. Jones is beaming, amazed by everything, and Rachelle is the light that made him, brought all this into being, and I know that sounds corny but it’s true. It just is.

The wind passes through some branches and a tree casts red leaves like sparks. And I envision suddenly waking into this holy moment, as I have. Jones climbing a hill, pulling himself up by the exposed roots of trees, Rachelle, smiling and laughing, chasing after him. The colours and smells all so vivid and ancient, and what were the odds that this would become my life? What miracles have fallen upon me to bring me to this moment?

But I know I cannot keep up with the robust play. I will go back and rest in the car. Recharge my oxygen concentrator. Wait for them to get back. And as we are waving goodbye and shouting encouragements I lose myself to the inevitability of watching these two do things I cannot, of watching them move further away from me and deeper into this world, and as I am making this mental transition Rachelle asks if I heard that.

I snap back to the living, immediate world in front of me. I am in the forest and Jones is holding out a stick, looking at me.

“Heard what?”

He said, “I carry the fire.”

And it takes me a moment. The phrase, “You carry the fire,” from a book I loved about a nearly spent man trying to shepherd his son through a dangerous landscape. Foolishly, I used to repeat the phrase to Jones when he was younger, hoping to instil some beautiful purpose within, but it never took. Jones never repeated it, and soon enough I just stopped saying it to him and let it fall away, but now, standing before me with a perfect, red maple leaf pierced through its heart on the stick he was holding out, he says, “Look daddy, I carry the fire.”

That moment that easily could have slipped away– and would have if not for Rachelle’s intervention–now alive forever, blazing in a forest.

michaelmurray.ca

Michael Murray is nothing without his wife.
Rachelle Maynard. That’s his wife.
Rachelle Maynard is the bomb.
She is the Galaxy Brain, and everything you see here is because of her.
That is the Capital T, truth.

But never mind that, for Michael Murray is truly the Galaxy Brain. He has won the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest and is so good-natured that he was once mistaken for a missionary while strolling the streets of a small Cuban town. He has written for the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, Hazlitt Magazine, CBC Radio, Reader’s Digest and thousands of other prestigious publications and high-flying companies that pay obscene sums of money .You should buy his book, A Van Full of Girls and throw money at Galaxy Brain.