cant stop / wont stop

I will also say that I have read this several times now and it still makes me  cry.

“True story: His Name is Robert Downey Jr.” by Dana Reinhardt

I’m willing to go out on a limb here and guess that most stories of kindness do not begin with drug addicted celebrity bad boys.

    Mine does.

    His name is Robert Downey Jr.

    You’ve probably heard of him. You may or may not be a fan, but I am, and I was in the early 90’s when this story takes place.

    It was at a garden party for the ACLU of Southern California. My stepmother was the executive director, which is why I was in attendance without having to pay the $150 fee. It’s not that I don’t support the ACLU, it’s that I was barely twenty and had no money to speak of.

    I was escorting my grandmother. There isn’t enough room in this essay to explain to you everything she was, I would need volumes, so for the sake of brevity I will tell you that she was beautiful even in her eighties, vain as the day is long, and whip smart, though her particular sort of intelligence did not encompass recognizing young celebrities.

    I pointed out Robert Downey Jr. to her when he arrived, in a gorgeous cream-colored linen suit, with Sarah Jessica Parker on his arm. My grandmother shrugged, far more interested in piling her paper plate with various unidentifiable cheeses cut into cubes. He wasn’t Carey Grant or Gregory Peck. What did she care?

    The afternoon’s main honoree was Ron Kovic, whose story of his time in the Vietnam War that had left him confined to a wheelchair had recently been immortalized in the Oliver Stone film Born on the Fourth of July.

    I mention the wheelchair because it played an unwitting role in what happened next.

    We made our way to our folding chairs in the garden with our paper plates and cubed cheeses and we watched my stepmother give one of her eloquent speeches and a plea for donations, and there must have been a few other people who spoke but I can’t remember who, and then Ron Kovic took the podium, and he was mesmerizing, and when it was all over we stood up to leave, and my grandmother tripped.

    We’d been sitting in the front row (nepotism has its privileges) and when she tripped she fell smack into the wheelchair ramp that provided Ron Kovic with access to the stage. I didn’t know that wheelchair ramps have sharp edges, but they do, at least this one did, and it sliced her shin right open.

    The volume of blood was staggering.

    I’d like to be able to tell you that I raced into action; that I quickly took control of the situation, tending to my grandmother and calling for the ambulance that was so obviously needed, but I didn’t. I sat down and put my head between my knees because I thought I was going to faint. Did I mention the blood?

    Luckily, somebody did take control of the situation, and that person was Robert Downey Jr.

    He ordered someone to call an ambulance. Another to bring a glass of water. Another to fetch a blanket. He took off his gorgeous linen jacket and he rolled up his sleeves and he grabbed hold of my grandmother’s leg, and then he took that jacket that I’d assumed he’d taken off only to it keep out of the way, and he tied it around her wound. I watched the cream colored linen turn scarlet with her blood.

    He told her not to worry. He told her it would be alright. He knew, instinctively, how to speak to her, how to distract her, how to play to her vanity. He held onto her calf and he whistled. He told her how stunning her legs were.

    She said to him, to my humiliation: “My granddaughter tells me you’re a famous actor but I’ve never heard of you.”

    He stayed with her until the ambulance came and then he walked alongside the stretcher holding her hand and telling her she was breaking his heart by leaving the party so early, just as they were getting to know each other. He waved to her as they closed the doors. “Don’t forget to call me, Silvia,” he said. “We’ll do lunch.”

    He was a movie star, after all.

    Believe it or not, I hurried into the ambulance without saying a word. I was too embarrassed and too shy to thank him.

    We all have things we wish we’d said. Moments we’d like to return to and do differently. Rarely do we get that chance to make up for those times that words failed us. But I did. Many years later.

    I should mention here that when Robert Downey Jr. was in prison for being a drug addict (which strikes me as absurd and cruel, but that’s the topic for a different essay), I thought of writing to him. Of reminding him of that day when he was humanity personified. When he was the best of what we each can be. When he was the kindest of strangers.

    But I didn’t.

    Some fifteen years after that garden party, ten years after my grandmother had died and five since he’d been released from prison, I saw him in a restaurant.

    I grew up in Los Angeles where celebrity sightings are commonplace and where I was raised to respect people’s privacy and never bother someone while they’re out having a meal, but on this day I decided to abandon the code of the native Angeleno, and my own shyness, and I approached his table.

    I said to him, “I don’t have any idea if you remember this…” and I told him the story.

    He remembered.

    “I just wanted to thank you,” I said. “And I wanted to tell you that it was simply the kindest act I’ve ever witnessed.”

THIS IS A TRUMPET

THIS IS A TROMBONE

THIS IS A TUBA

AND THIS IS A FRENCH HORN

Slidey Trumpet

Big ass trumpet

Drunk Trumpet

The first one in the left corner: It’s a first communion rosary, and it’s not cheap.

The black one in the first line: That’s a widow rosary and it’s old.

The white one in the second line:  is a commemoration rosary. It has a miniature picture in the round part. I haven’t seen that since the 70′s.

In the third line, multicolor one: It’s an Anima mundi, I have only seen those in the hands of Rosary ministery’s old ladies. The oldest ones are from the 80′s after Juan Pablo II came to Mexico for the first time. It’s one of the old ones, I know because the crucifixes are different.  The third one on the fourth line: Red and gold. The style is old, the metal is dark, that’s a 50′s rosary, probably a quinceañera one (or it’s maybe older, from the 40′s when the brides carried red roses with their offerings).

The fifth one on the fourth line: It’s a quinceañera rosary with Ignatius’s tear. The style is old and in my part of Mexico is orphan girls who used it. At least it was when I was young. The third one of the fifth line: the blue one with the anchor. That one I have only seen in Veracruz and it doesn’t look new. The fifth one on the fifth line: That’s a 90′s wedding rosary. Black and white patterns were popular on that date. The fourth one on the last line: That’s a first communion rosary from the 30′s. It’s delicate and most probably silver. The rest wrench my heart too, the humble everyday rosaries with wooden beads and knots. Those are cheap and bear the wear and tear of their user handling. But those  I described are much more.

Those are mother’s rosaries.

Art By IG: @dragon_arte