When I was younger I always wanted to be a messenger of light. I’d walk around telling an uncle here that his drawing is really good and an aunt there that her basketball game was really fun to watch. But the message I really wanted to deliver was that the chandelier over the staircase was a lot like Grandpa, bright and charged with energy like him, and white like his hair had always been, lighting up a room like the Holy Spirit.
The chandelier stood apart from the ordinary in its efficacy, just like Grandpa, enough for me to compare the two, with one being an exceptional human and the other a child’s imagination of what exceptionalism looks like ascending the stairs before bed.
Even though normally a lamp has to perform only one function this lamp had purpose across more dimensions than any other inanimate object in my memory. I had labeled it an original and compared it to greatness, like a work of art. My Grandpa was an artist but he didn’t create the chandelier, instead he and Grandma created a home where the last thing I would see before the next day was their light.
Francis Erich McElroy 