When I worked at KOMO-TV in Seattle, there was this one time I was asked to edit a video on behalf of a Leukemia fundraising effort. I actually went out with the video crew to a private residence as well as Children’s Hospital. I edited the finished piece in a linear suite at the station.

The music I chose to breathe additional life into the imagery was Debussy’s “Claire de Lune”. I chose it because it’s one of those pieces of music that’s both sweet and sad. Perfect for these children captured on videotape.

Not all of them were expected to live more than a decade longer.

What jumped out at me, though, surprised me as I went through the footage, was that all the kids in the video were just... kids. They acted accordingly in child-like ways. 

What I expected, was behavior more somber, more depressed.

Right? 

They all lived under the shadow of Death even more so than the rest of us.

Death was actively stalking these children.

But, for whatever reason, that fact had no impact on how they behaved in their day-to-day. They remained untouched by how dire was their circumstance.

And I never forgot that.

Children.

Later in my life, around this time of year, in fact... I was thinking about my most favorite of Christmas songs, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”. You see, at that point in my life, I had something like 10 versions of the song in my Christmas playlist. And I was struck by how each singer’s interpretation tweaked the song’s sadness, tweaked the song’s sweetness. 

Eventually, it was Amy Grant’s version of the song that struck a balance that moved me the most. So I ventured out onto the World Wide Web to find the images for which that music was seemingly created.

To find images that suited the music most perfectly.

Sweetness.

And sadness.

In the end, it was a pretty intense adventure on which I went. The experiences of children around the world are, can be, truly horrific.

But somehow, still at surface level, they’re still children.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The light in any human being can be snuffed out. But in children... that battle has yet to be lost.

So even when you can see how bad the circumstances of these childen are...

When I was a kid, I brought all my broken toys to my dad.

The one incident I remember most was the time I was building a model Viper from the original Battlestar Galactica television series. I had the body cemented together and was attaching the front engine covers. Got the right one set just right... but the left one actually fell inside the body.

Oooooo I was so mad. Couldn’t figure out how to get it out of there without pulling the body apart. So I took it to my dad who used a length of masking tape to capture the cover and pull it out.

Hmmmm.

Never woulda thought of that.

Later, when Kimmer ‘n I were dating, I started bringing my broken toys to her. Only instead of broken toys... they were broken people.

Like this one time at KOMO-TV on the weekend, the technical director was starting to feel pretty bad. As in pretty bad. So I get Kimmer on the phone... hand the phone to the technical director. After a bit of troubleshooting, the technical director gets up and heads off to the nearest ER.

This other time, I was in Stockholm, Sweden, playing the role of production assistant on a Travels in Europe shoot. We were shooting a parade under a hot, noon sun, my friend, the photographer, Tom, running through and around this thing for a hella long way getting all the cool shots. 

He was pretty wiped afterwards.

Next morning, he’s in a ton of pain, can’t leave his room, so I get Kimmer on the phone... hand the phone to Tom. Next thing you know, we’re on our way to the concierge who sends us a couple blocks over to the hotel’s doctor ‘cause Tom’s got kidney stones going on.

By early afternoon, he’s up and running again.

Now, the reason I bring all this up tonight is because I think I’m noticing Linzy doing the same thing.

She called Kimmer late this afternoon ‘cause one of her friends at Cornish is pretty sick. So she got Kimmer on the phone... handed the phone to her friend.

What can I say?