A few weeks ago now, I attended Divine Liturgy at an Eastern Orthodox Cathedral in Birmingham. There was about an hour and a half of standing, yes, but all the tropes associated with deep Orthodox worship revealed themselves to be true. There was unity in the chanting, power in reciting the creed, the great beauty of Christian doctrine magnified by the icons surrounding the place.
After Liturgy, I visited their small store and purchased an icon of the Archangel Gabriel. I didn’t quite have enough money to afford one of the Jesus icons, but I wanted to take an icon home. My theology professor in Seminary had a hand-made one from a student and I thought it made for worshipful, meaningful decoration.
I was at first attracted to the beauty of the Gabriel icon, but suddenly something from my past clicked and I remembered Gabriel was one of the first parts I had ever played onstage.
While I did a church play around age five or six, the first production I remember vividly was called The Best Story Ever, one of those cantatas published by Brentwood Music out of Tennessee. They usually make the rounds in all the evangelical churches. My school was a Baptist private school and so we were able to do religious-themed cantatas at Christmas.
I played Gabriel in Best Story. Technically, I guess, I wasn’t onstage, but walking the aisles. That fat little third grader in an angel robe was me! And I reckon I understood the importance of Gabriel’s part though, of course, I would've rather been the lead.
So, the choice of the Gabriel icon seemed right—predestined even. I brought it to my mother and showed it to her. She saw I was tickled by the coincidence of choosing Gabriel, my first role.
Then, off the cuff, she said, “You should name your first son Gabriel.”
This was quite a change from the woman who weeks or months before had said laughing, “You don’t need to have children. I don’t need to be a grandmother again.” Don’t read into this anything negative. She was not telling me to not have a child, but she does know my habits, my interests. She and I also know the reality of being unmarried and almost forty and the accompanying rumors that usually surround a person in that situation.
I think it has become commonplace for her to think and speak that way because one night, long ago, I asked if she would be okay with me not marrying or having a child. I asked this because I felt I’d be letting the family down somehow if I did't. I rationalized it was okay because my brother had the wife and the two and a half kids and the dog and the cat and the fence, etc. So, the Tittle name (unfortunate as the spelling is) would be passed on to both my brother’s boys.
I often jokingly say that after my father had two boys and my brother had two boys, if I were to have a child, God would say, “Here, Ryan. Here’s a girl!” And then I would have no idea what to do with (hold it upside down by the ankle?). I’ve never even been around baby girls because they’re so scarce in the family.
At any rate, when I asked my mother if it would be okay to not have a child, she told me it would be no burden to her. Perhaps the thrill of being a grandmother again would be severely muted as she no longer has my father around to contribute to the doting.
But, after all those months of conversation like that, holding the icon, she told me I should name my first son Gabriel. And suddenly I loved that. I imagined holding the infant, pronouncing him “Gabriel” and looking back at a face I would love until my dying day.
Don’t let anyone tell you it is only women who have these kinds of fantasies. It may be true that when the average man is first presented with a child, he might feel the urge deep inside to run. And many do. But there are those of us who feel in the pit of our stomach a desire to nurture also.
But I have not had those urgings since I was a very young man. If you were to have asked me at five what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer would have been, “I want to be a husband and a father.” That Ryan has not reared his head in many years.
There were lots of reasons that feeling dissipated. For one, a string of failed relationships left me sour for many years. For another, I have watched nearly all my friends attempt their second, sometimes third marriages. There is a part of me that will always be the old-fashioned coot for whom divorce could only be a win if either partner was abused—physically, sexually, or verbally. I have even had a friend be told upon walking into the living room he shared with his wife, that she was a lesbian, and she was taking his children from him. Given our society’s current debate with identity, I felt no need in making my life harder. Or a child’s life harder by the possibility of divorce.
But, even now, I can’t get Gabriel’s face out of my mind-- my boy Gabriel. Someone I could encourage, love—help him achieve his dreams in the way I couldn’t achieve mine. Still, that brings up another neurosis: what if he’s anything like me?
How terrible. What if he inherited the same discrepancies that make me such a difficult person to match with another? Would he also be, on the one hand, super religious and, on the other hand, have an affinity for the lowest forms of humor? Would he also be a reader of books in a world of video games? Would he also be more in touch with his delicate nature to the point that women would only see in him a beta male? Would he struggle in his adolescence with egotism? Would he waste a fine Friday afternoon like this writing this essay?
And of the world? What would I say to him? “Welcome to a world where madness is common and sanity rare.” “Welcome to a world where sickness is not only perpetually with us but is killing us slowly and sometimes quickly.” “Welcome to a world where you will be reeled in by other people’s psychosis.” And yet I’m not one of those people who thinks the world is such a bad place that we should do something stupid like voluntarily let the species die. I am in constant awe of people’s sense of forgiveness, their ability to move on, their ability to create beautiful works of art. And yet, forgiveness, moving on, and beautiful works of art are disappearing as is belief in God and nearly every way the world has made sense to me.
Gabriel,
If I ever have you—if I can ever find a woman who accepts all my flaws and inconsistencies—my, how I would like to be your father. How I would love to indulge your whims, but tell you stuff straight. How I would love to introduce the name of Jesus to you and suggest the model.
I keep seeing your nose wrinkle up at me and I have this urge to look to my right and see the woman who helped create you. But the only thing I see there is emptiness, a vacuum, a vortex. Without something there, there is no you and my heart breaks for that and for you.
It is not impossible. We could still see each other. I could still teach you so many words. I could still love you—if something appears through the vortex. It is not impossible. I could still...I could still...
Love,
Your awaiting father
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