A 5 year old dreams. At 5 I aspired to be the oversized-sweater, big-smile-at-the-lake, 1999 version of Britney Spears. You dreamt of being an artisan apple dumpling maker and a firefighting paleontologist. 5 year olds are blind socialites, figuring out people and testing boundaries. They have wild visions of jungles and pirate ships. They have no doubts in humanity or fears of shootings and because of that, the world, and they themselves, seem limitless. When I was 5 my biggest worry was if the Johnny Appleseed who visited my kindergarten class was real. I had nightmares of him as a gigantor with a prickly beard and a scent of Red Delicious.
A 5 year old is just a kid – still dependent. Your mom is still learning if you like coconut, wonders if you are allergic to dust, has no idea how to protect your knees, and uses trial and error to try to get you to communicate about your day.
I see you as the 5 year old and the 24 year old that you are. I remember crawling with you during our growing pains. In our tree fort we babbled about Thailand and Florida and who the hell was in charge of our lives because it often didn’t seem like it was us. We laughed about touchdown celebrations and you taught be about NBA Christmas jerseys. You helped me appreciate the godliest NBA player based on his hot hand and heart. We had a nightmare ride to Greenville because we refused to state the hurtful obvious but we shook it off like a 5 year old moves on from a big boo boo and that night we lived without loneliness in such a highly isolated city.
You’re the first person I’ve grown to love that isn’t a Carolina fan and doesn’t care about how proud I am or what I am proud of. The first person I’ve befriended that is so different than me. The differences struck me so much I yelled insults in your face in the basement of Tucker. Then, 5 years ago, on the same day in different places we changed completely. December 31, 2011, Day Zero.
Over the years my aversion towards your State fanaticism and uncharted organization lessened. Yet, I found ways to uncover our differences- making fun of your wardrobe and creating fall club banters and rudely saying how I would say this and not that. I grew up with you over glass-bottled Coca-Colas and Fall variety packs and the best rest in the rocking chairs of Cracker Barrel.
Over the last months my coldness has melted into radiant delight in being your friend. The differences are and always will be there, but your friendship has been so purely kind and gentle and pushy and it is one of my top 5 favorite things in Raleigh. It’s shone in the bubble-blowing car ride and double-header weddings in Durham then New Jersey in 24 hours. It’s shone in the Pit, in Celebration Suites at Old Town, in the L of Maingate Lakeside Resort, on starry nights at the Court of Carolinas and during fall breezes in the Tree tops of the Peace House. It doesn’t matter where we are.
And now it’s hard to see you as a 5 year old when I am so sure that you’ve become a man. Nothing is perfect around you and yet you directly think of things and people next to you and set your mind on the one that goes before and behind you. You sit with them in coffeeshops and turn snowballing ideas into forts and teams of snowmen with snow forts and even though you are efficient on your own, you give yourself to others with no rush. You faithfully, genuinely, sweetly, ask me why I want anything in addition to Jesus– a simple question, but one that surfaces worthless pursuits in the world.
Like a 5 year old who wants to be a firefighting hero, you’re so curiously driven to be a hero for the IM-champ at Red Zone and the unmet friend with no direction. You are Sherlock, desperate to meet every stranger with a curious lead. You want to learn from people– how they play with their daughters and how they have developed a mentality that is brutally outside themselves, how they made decisions to leave everything behind and gathered people to follow them while following Him. You aspire to be the man who lays out the wisest challenge and has endless, loving questions. The man with a coolness that is as memorable as the no. 44 jersey hanging in the Wolfpack rafters. The man with sticky stories that create teary-eyed laughter and quotes that live on for centuries. It’s you, and all your cross eyed, “no-no”, ponder-and-tilt-head quirks with a little dash of Chais and Charles and Curry. You aspire to be the Spencer at the finish line.
And yet, as a man, you are still a kid. But your Dad doesn’t have to learn about you day by day. He knows every brown hair on your head, every emotion you feel, every dream you have and everything else you don’t even know you dream of:
O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.
I love remembering who you are right now. A 5 year old and a 24 year old. A boy and a man.