BILLY G. WILLIAMS

I remember when I was small, and I’d fall asleep in your bed watching cartoons.

You’d come into your bedroom and see me laying in your spot, and you’d scoop me up in your arms and put me to bed in the other bedroom. Sometimes I’d pretend to be asleep so I didn’t have to get up. Or maybe I just liked being held and carried. Sometimes you knew I was pretending, and you’d tell me to “quit playing possum,” but that just made me better at pretending to be asleep.

One time you whacked my feet against the bedroom door frame accidentally (my legs have been the longest part of my body since I can remember). It didn’t hurt me at all, but it was enough to get me to “quit playing possum,” and when I opened my eyes, your face was full of regret for misjudging the length of my gangly legs while maneuvering my limp horizontal body through the door frame. You felt bad for waking me, but I had been awake the whole time, relishing being carried like a princess. So then I felt bad for playing possum, because it had resulted in making you feel bad.

I’m not sure why I remember that so vividly.

When I was in high school, you and I had a lunch date without Granny. It was our first one in years; maybe the first one since the days of you picking me up from Pensacola Christian School. We went to Sonny’s, way before it moved to its new location. We talked about school, and dogs, and food, and what funny or cute things Zac was doing recently (admittedly our favorite subject).

You told me about a time when you were young, and your mother sent you to the store for some milk. You said that on your way home, you walked past some boys playing baseball in an empty lot. They begged you to play; one team was a man short. You thought it would be okay for you to just play one inning… which may have led to more than one inning, you weren’t really clear on the timeframe. But what you were clear on is that the milk spoiled sitting in the sun-dappled shade of a tree while you played baseball with your friends, and you got “such a whoopin” for it! I asked you if your team won the game, and you said you didn’t even remember. Winning or losing wasn’t really the point I guess, just your love for the sport. Watching your eyes twinkle as you recalled the details of that story is something I’ll never forget… that twinkle had a way of telling me, “the whoopin’ was worth it”.

While we were waiting on the waitress to bring the check, you started doodling, as you always do. Maybe we had run out of things to talk about, or maybe you felt like you needed an excuse to doodle, but you had drawn a three-dimensional cube, and you pointed to it and asked me if I could draw that. I’ve never been much of an artist, but I come from a long pedigree of proficient doodlers…

…so I figured I would give it my best effort. I tried and tried, and you enjoyed watching me make mistake after mistake, chuckling at me a little bit. Then you took the pen and showed me how truly simple it is to draw; I had really been overthinking it.

The difficulty I had trying to draw it on my own had really piqued my interest, but it also insured that your instructions, when you finally gave them, were engraved into my memory. Three-dimensional cubes are still the only cool thing I can draw, and I still think they’re neat. I draw 3D cubes in the margins of my notebooks every time I’m stuck on hold.

Whether it came naturally or was something you had to work at, you were always good at instructing. I remember you and mom trying to teach me how to ride a bike, right out in front of the house on Crystal Springs, the one with the pretty oak tree in the front yard. You could never get grass to grow in the shade of that oak tree, but you’d stand out there and water the dirt every day, just hoping.

Anyhow, you and mom had tried for what felt like an eternity to teach me to ride my new “big girl” bike. It had tall pink tires, a white basket, and tassels coming from the handlebars. But it was missing a crucial component in my mind: training wheels.

When mom got tired of running beside me and holding onto my bike seat, she’d tap out and you would take over. You, surely one of the greatest baseball, softball, and tee-ball coaches of all time, became more and more determined to teach me to ride that bike. I think it became a personal challenge for you. Maybe this was the first time you’d ever had such difficulty teaching a kid to do something athletic (I’m just special that way, I guess)!

On the particular day that sticks in my memory, mom was at work, and you and I were at it hard. I think I’d finally gotten to the point where I could ride for 25 yards or so before losing my balance and falling off. I don’t recall the exact turn of events, but I think you must have been feeling like I was doing so well, it was time to throw a new trick at me… once I had gotten pretty far away from you, you yelled, “THAT’S GREAT BABY, NOW TURN ‘ROUND AND COME BACK TO ME!”

Maybe you were too tired to run down to the end of the street to help me turn around, or maybe I was looking so well-balanced that you thought I was ready. There’s no blame either way; turning is obviously next in the logical progression of things to teach someone who is learning to ride a bike, but when I leaned into the turn and there was no training wheel there to support my body’s weight, I met the pavement. Hard.

You ran to me as quickly as if you were stealing second base, scooped me up, and took me inside to Granny. I don’t even remember if I was crying when you picked me up, but I distinctly recall looking at the greatest source of pain, my pinky fingernail, which was bloody, mostly detached, and sticking straight up, and screaming my ever-loving head off!

You called it a “finger brace” when you put it on me, and explained its purpose while I sniffled back tears. Picturing that “finger brace” in my mind now, it looks more akin to some kind of medieval medical device. To this day, I’m not sure if it was actually a legitimate finger brace you had from a previous injury, or if it was something you built in 15 minutes from random materials you had lying around your shop.

When mom got home from work, I was watching cartoons on the couch, eating ice cream, with this huge foam and metal contraption duct-taped around my pinky finger. Ever the protective parent, mom overreacted to my injury, and you had to calm her down by saying things like, “Oh honey, it’s just a fingernail! At least it wasn’t her whole finger!”

By the time my pinky fingernail finally fell all the way off, I could ride my “big girl” bike with NO HANDS, which in my mind, made me the best bike rider ever. I thought I was so cool! Thank you for that, Paw-Paw.

Thanks for teaching me to ride my bike, even when you probably would have rather been watering your dirt under the oak tree, or inside eating popcorn in the recliner watching CHiPS reruns, or baseball, or boxing. You probably thought you were just teaching me to ride a bike, but what you actually taught me was persistence, patience, and perseverance.

Thanks for teaching me to draw a cube; something so simple that seems so complex. You probably thought you were just killing time while we waited, but you were actually teaching me to think outside the box when problem-solving, because the answer is sometimes much more simple than it appears.

Thanks for carrying me to bed all those years ago, and thanks for carrying our family through all your years. I love you, and I can’t wait to see you again.