The Death of a Blue Jay
"Daddy, look at those blue jays.
They are so beautiful!"
"Yeah, they are, Son, but they sure are
destructive and raise a lot of hell."
Steve was an absolutely adorable child. He won the most beautiful baby award at the Boston University School of Theology Baby Show, where I was in school, and made an appearance, picture and all, in the Boston Herald newspaper. He exuded charisma, and people loved him. He was so vitally alive.
When he was four or five years old, he ran away from home. After a frantic search his mother found him swinging on a fence down at the local grammar school. He kept saying to her, "I want to go to school; I want to go to school." It was not a portent of things to come. As bright as Steve was, and he was very bright, he never did well in school. From the beginning he had difficulty with reading, writing, and math. We later came to believe that he had a serious learning disability.