The Metamorphosis of Liam Thompson

 

Liam, I've been thinking about you. As you know, I love metamorphosis, watching living things grow and change and thrive. So I'll start your birthday post with the larval form. This photo was taken November 8, 1999, at around 2 in the afternoon, and we'd just gotten you home. It was your birth day. You were so precious. Your head was the size of a Delicious apple. Your hair was a bizarre satiny champagne color.

 

In this photo, you look to be about at the second instar.  Still pretty soft and grublike. Mighty cute.

 You've got some molts to go, little worm. Washington County Fair, probably September 2003.

We'll fast forward a bit to the sweet fella, who has shed into a form that's a bit more hip.

And I couldn't resist this one of you peeking to see if Daddy was really asleep in the hammock on Hog Island. If he was, he wouldn't be for long. You were an itch!

An all-time favorite, from that time I took you along to the Space Coast Birding Festival, and we had a little time just to mess around on the beach. Prolegs have lengthened. This caterpillar is maturing! 

I cannot look at this photo without laughing out loud. Lord, how you make me laugh. Still an itch!

Lots of good food, fresh air and exercise add up to a healthy late-instar unit. Running the haybales on a winter evening. I can only watch in amazement. This is not in my Hobbit repertoire, to leap at high speed from bale to bale. I'd be down in the first crevasse in a heartbeat.

Oh, my. I have been surpassed by a head or so.

Renting a tux for prom, April 6, 2017.

Ma wasn't going to let just anyone take your senior photos. She's too cheap, and 

homegrown is better.

Moving into elegant form as a college freshman on November 6, 2018. Who's that lady?

She keeps appearing. Must be someone important!

Four years later, at your June 2022 college grad party...

photo by Evan Dorsky

and a time-travel back in summer 2022...why, there's Hailey again! 

I feel like the lucky one to be able to see you through each molt.  You've emerged!

You're a Mothman now!

Liam and Hog Sphinx, July 24, 2022

Fully realized, and able to fly, now looking for a place to land.

I'm so thankful to have you here, if only for the interim**, to share this place, this cur, and these skies.

Your first magazine cover arrived via rumbly brown truck yesterday. I hadn't painted a magazine cover by the time I was 23! Oh, what a feeling, to see your work in print! May this be the first of many, many more!

And there's the full lunar eclipse from 3-6 AM, on your birthday. I am, of course, up to see it. I've gotten up to look at the moon at 12:30, 2, 3, 4... I peek out. The moon has but a tiny sliver of light; the disc is dark. You're asleep, and I'm not going to wake you.

I have been awake, enjoying the eclipse, sleeping in peaceful bits, thinking about the Metamorphosis of Liam. 23 years old!

I go to wake you. I have to. I have a coat for you in my arms. You think about it for a minute, then come with me through the dark house to the downstairs patio. Through the binoculars, the moon is a pellucid disc, not red, but more the color of sun through a squirrel's ear.

Orion blazes to the south, leaning into his battle with Taurus. Mars is hung up right between Taurus' horns.

I'm betting on Taurus for this battle; he's got Mars on his mind. The Pleiades twinkle over the moon, revealed in its darkness.

 Everything is perfectly dark but for the stars and that softly glowing disc. The night is cold, breezy. Dry leaves swish and tick in the wind. 

Whoa, coool! you say as you look through the binoculars. I'm grinning in the dark, glad you let me drag you out yet again into this abundant life.

You look again, take a deep breath of the sweet cold night, and turn back to the warm house and your  bed.

I'm glad I woke you after all. I stay out, looking. 

 A meteor streaks over. I'm still smiling about it when another meteor falls.

It has to be so dark to see the meteors any more.

The moon stays in totality for ages longer than I thought it would. Its disk gets darker and darker as it sinks behind the orchard trees. I can't see my hand in front of my face. I can't take photos; this is well above my pay grade as a photographer. It's 6:05 AM, and still dull squirrel-ear mauve. 6:18 am, and it's still a barely visible pinkish whisper in the west as dawn streak-paints the eastern sky. Who knew?

Up and down the tower stairs I go. I hope you're asleep again.

I love you, sweet, funny, brilliant, beautiful boy. I sure love living here with you. Happy birthday, and salut! 

to another swing around Ol' Sol.

 Here's to you, to the tremendous strides you've taken the last few years; to the life I know is waiting for you out there, the work that will, I trust, use your talents and bolster your confidence; a space of your own; love and travel and new places to explore on your big, still-tender wings.

**PSA: he's still looking for a position as a graphic designer. The closer to NYC, the better.