Baby Guido
Stephen Mosher
This story isn’t really a story about my mother, as much as it is a story that illustrates that we were always, always on the same page, that we always, always understood each other, that she always, always saw me.
I had a childhood. It wasn’t always happy, it wasn’t always terrible. It was just enough of both to make me appreciate the importance of balance. But because of the crimes that were committed against me as a child, there has always been a sort of need for meditation, for therapy, for self-reflection in my life. The child that I was has always controlled a great deal of the life of the man that I am. Because of this I have always been fascinated by movies, tv shows, and plays that have a theme involving the past and the present versions of a character meeting and reconciling. I think one of the best examples of a movie like this is Disney’s The Kid, in which Bruce Willis’s childhood self travels through time to help him get his life straightened out just before his fortieth birthday. Thinking theatrically, it’s all about Nine. For decades, now, I have equated my experience of walking with my childhood self as the “Baby Guido Syndrome” - just as Guido relates to his younger self in the play, just as Baby Guido sits on his lap at the end of the movie, I have felt my Baby Stephen, walking alongside me, all my adult life. He has been my constant companion. I love him, so. But I recognize the importance of letting him go.
About fifteen years ago, I was living my best life. I was in my early forties, I was beyond healthy, I was in the best shape of my life, I had no pain. I knew who I was. I was living every day, confident and content. I was happy in a way that I hadn’t been, ever. Each day I rose and went to the gym before sunrise, starting the day healthy and happy, carrying that health and happiness into my entire day. And one day it happened. I was leaving the 19th Street Gym at seven am on a sunny spring day. I came up from the basement gym, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and headed East to Fifth Avenue, where I found something we New Yorkers don’t find every day: the street was completely and totally empty. There was no traffic. There were no cars. There were hardly even any people. Turning left, I walked straight up the center of Fifth Avenue, into the morning sunlight. And as I walked uptown into the day, I thought to myself, gently, quietly, peacefully, “I’m happy.”
And I felt it happen.
Baby Stephen let go of my right hand, and walked away from me, right down Fifth Avenue toward Fourteenth Street. And I stopped. I turned. I could see the young version of myself, as though he were a real child standing there, in real time. I was watching the child inside of me walk away, and I felt the most overwhelming sense of peace. Then he stopped. He stopped and turned around and looked at me for what seemed like an eternity but was mere seconds. He smiled and looked into my eyes for a few seconds before taking another step, and when he took that step, he stepped toward me. Footstep after footstep brought Baby Stephen back to where I was standing, watching him, and, deftly, he slipped his hand back into mine. And we turned uptown and walked into the morning light. It was maybe the most spiritual moment I’ve ever experienced in my life.
Later that day, I called My Mam and when she asked me what was new, I told her the story, exactly as it is written above. And when I was finished, she said:
“You called him back. You were almost free. Both of you. But you called him back.”
We talked more about this spiritual experience, about my life of the last forty years and where it was today, and about Baby Stephen. I don’t know if that’s a conversation that every adult child can have with their parent but something inside of me told me, then, and tells me, now, that this was a rare moment, one that is shared when two people are fully and entirely cut from the same cloth, when two people fully and entirely understand one another.
That’s me and Juana, all over the place.
