BHAM BUZZ
Journal

By Joe O'Donnell
After working on something like 250 monthly issues of this magazine, I am tired of looking at a picture of myself in this space. I am quite sure you, kind reader, have to be exhausted.

So this month we went with a more handsome fellow, Gabriel Best, my grandson.

Although he is now two months old, it seems difficult to believe he is a part of our lives.

Of course, I am trying to figure out why his mother is not still wandering through our house, bored and asking me to take her and a few friends to a movie. I don’t keep up with time very well.

Which is, I suppose, one of the things I would tell Gabriel right now. Watch out for time, kid. It sneaks up on you. This morning becomes this afternoon, then this evening—so soon.

But I guess he knows that. He’s already growing so quickly. He spent his first weeks in NICU because he was born about six weeks prematurely. There he was, laying in first one kind of bed then another—with lamps glaring down at him or alternatively glassed in behind an Isolette unit. Always with the various tubes and wires attached to his tiny body.

I would visit him and think how brave he was. And how brave his mother and father were, how strong.

I’d tell him that now, if we were on full speaking terms. Right now I think we just kind of look at each other—trying to figure out who the heck we are. I’d tell him courage, in all its many guises, is the thing to cling to in this world—the thing that keeps us going and sets us apart.

I was looking at the picture printed on this page. Gabriel looks so satisfied here, smiling at some inner thought, some quiet contentment. And I thought how humor plays such a deep role in a happy life. If I had a blessing, it would be that he always be able to find that same smile. 
January Birmingham, Alabama

  

 
Digital Newstand

View Magazine

bmag buzz

What are you doing
this Weekend?
 



 
bmag bonus


This Month's Giveaway ...
Tickets to the Rigling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, which will be in Birmingham from Jan. 28-Feb. 1.

Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter,
the bmag buzz, and be automatically entered for your chance to win!