Reflection Unto

IMPOSSIBLE GEOMETRY

He wheels a bladed scepter, scratching a hairline fracture in the delicate surface beneath his wrinkled hands: a minuscule canyon in which untold, enigmatic wonders await liberation.

He cleaves the whole in two shards - they slope, curve, and spike with astounding new contours.

He snips ribbons of sticky copper, enveloping each newborn naked shard in unblemished golden armor.

He glances through a fragment of radically green glass, impish twinkle in his eye (or is that an illusion?). He’s appraising your intrigue, savoring your company.

Together, you shrug off midnight’s scolding approach, buzzing into the quiet morning while you piece together dozens of vibrant shards. Your unskilled fingertips nick a sharp corner. His dance across the glass, coaxing geometric marvels from somewhere deep in the depths of his grey matter.

Gradually, his withering hands shape the shards into miraculous forms. An erupting peony blossom. The proud wing of a dragonfly. The absurd parabola of Salvador Dalí’s mustache.

He unveils an iron wand, rusted from decades of conjuring magic. Hiss. Sizzle. He casts the fragile puzzle in ancient metal, sealing the impossible geometry of his mind with eternity’s leaden kiss.

The sun rises. He hangs this glittering, crystalized thought, --the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen-- in some obscure cobwebbed corner, where it will slowly accrue the layers of silver dust that coat the other brilliant relics in his workshop.

He sweeps. You examine your own unwithered hands, flecked with dappled chromatic light, refracted shades you hadn’t yet dared imagine. Twinkles in the old man’s eye.

You're buoyed by a joyous realization; you are a fresh cut shard of puzzle. And a hairline fracture has cracked open within your soul: a minuscule canyon in which untold, enigmatic wonders await liberation.

TARPON COVE

Steph and I glanced at each other nervously as we ambled toward the security line.

Have you ever attempted to fold up a brand new baby stroller (the approximate size of an old Buick, and nearly as many features) while an impatient mob taps their toes, your newborn spits up on your shoulder, and an overzealous TSA agent ferociously eyes the economy-sized baby formula in your bag, like it's the most suspicious item he's ever encountered? I had not. Let me tell you: the stakes feel Olympian. They might as well hang a timer above the metal detector.

This was our first time flying with newborn Harrison. Our destination (beyond getting past TSA's resident Magnum, P.I.): Steph's Uncle & Aunt's home in the Tarpon Cove neighborhood of Naples, Florida.

Donna and Julius have always had outsized significance in our lives beyond a standard auntly/avuncular presence. Steph's Mom died 10 years ago (while Steph was in college), and Donna, Steph, and Steph's sister Melissa, forged the indelible bond shared by those affected by the same unspeakable tragedy. Donna, a stepmother through marriage, but without biological children, became the de facto maternal figure for Steph and Melissa. Her love fills the void, poignant and potent, even with both sisters well into adulthood.

Donna's love extends to me too, when I join the family. She gives hugs that feel like home. She discloses the secrets to her most beloved recipes. We laugh loudly during movies. And in her husband Julius, I also find a creative counterpart I lacked in my own father.

Moreso than my own Dad, Julius is on my wavelength, so to speak. A wisecracker. A storyteller. Purveyor of an idiosyncratic wisdom that manages delightful contradictions: earnest and sardonic, crass and profound. His slow, sly grin telegraphs a treasure trove of anecdotes. He and his friends built an enormous houseboat after he served in the Army. His father was a shoe designer. Find yourself in conversation with Julius and he may recall how to roast a whole hog underground, break down how to make a lamp from an empty wine bottle, or let you uncover a dusty shoebox holding his vintage Leica III Stereo Viewer.

Upon my first visit (pre-child, pre-Magnum P.I. baby formula investigation), I notice Donna and Julius's home is adorned with magnificent panels of stained glass. Flappers in red hats that blaze in the morning light. Checkerboard lighthouses that amplify blasts of crimson sunset. Spirals, sailboats, and spider plants, each more vivid than the next. This little corner of Tarpon Cove brims with imagination and color.

Through surface-level salutations, I gather these are Julius' handiwork. When Steph's Mom died, Julius was the only family member with the artistic curiosity to take in her esoteric collection of stained glass. Subsequently, he taught himself through YouTube tutorials, conversations with glass shop owners, and old fashioned trial-and-error. These are all facts I'll learn later. In the moment, I sit with quiet admiration of his work, afraid pressing further is too eager for a first impression.

Though inside, I'm dying to see where these magical, shimmering scenes come to life.

Two years pass (and what feels like another in the La Guardia security line) before our return to Tarpon Cove. Finally on the plane, Harrison sleeps. Steph and I exchange another glance (first-time parents share a silent language of surprise, awe, and understanding), hoping his slumber lasts the full flight. In hopeful exhaustion, we nod off with our son.

THE FABLED WORKSHOP

There's a beacon I've grown to adore more than any other in my decade as a New Yorker: a vintage water tower composed of stained glass, perched in Brooklyn Bridge park. Stained glass artist Tom Fruin erected the tower in 2014.

The view, particularly at night (when it catches and refracts stray beams of light), is spectacular, an unforgettable gaze into New York's metaphysical majesty. Driving North on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, you can't miss the tower. Like a cosmic night light, it illuminates the city's most breathtaking view of the Manhattan skyline, drenching the iconic shapes in snatches of purples, greens, and blues.

The morning of our flight, we pass this tower on our way to the airport.

Upon landing in Naples, our aunt and uncle obsess over the two-month-old. We spot an ocelot on the backyard lawn as we reacquaint ourselves. Donna treats us to an exquisite prime rib dinner (Harrison feasts on a scoop of TSA-approved formula). Stuffed and exhausted, Steph, Donna and Harrison tuck in for the night.

As the night sky pulls its humid cloak over our corner of Tarpon Cove, Julius and I share an evening cigar, syncing creative wavelengths. He asks if I'd like to see his workshop. I try to downplay my glee, and we relocate to the garage.

Uncle Julius gestures nonchalantly at numerous masterpieces, remembering difficult cuts, the acquisition of hard-to-find colors, a challenging soldering job. I ask him if there's anything he's currently working on. He shows me a striking lillypad and lotus-flower design.

"Can we work on it?"

"Sure kid," he intones, flashing his slow, sly grin.

He switches on a grainy box television. He likes to work with background noise, and his favorite is on: America's Funniest Home Videos. Julius's impeccable craftsmanship often unfolds to the reverberations of canned slapstick laughter. I take great delight in this.

He shows me how to trace patterns, templatizing your intended design via carbon paper. He grabs a scissors and cuts one of the copies into precise pieces, steady as a surgeon. He browses his collection of full sheets and scrapglass, color coding the main template.

We practice overlaying each pattern piece onto glass, tracing the borders with a silver Sharpie. Then he shows me how to roll the glass cutter: forward, firm, and deliberate, never backwards.

I'm astounded at how easily and cleanly the glass snaps apart from such a barely-perceptible scoring mark. He shows me how to use a glass grinder to smooth a shard's jagged edges, always keeping the grinder's diamond-wheel wet. We cut and grind about ten pieces: not the whole pattern, but there's more to learn.

"This is the most soothing part," says Julius, as he produces a spool of copper tape. Peeling off the tape's backing, he carefully wraps each piece in the copper, snipping off an endpoint from the spoool with a practiced scissors snip.

Finally, he shows me how to bind the pieces together. Each shard's copper jacket is painted in an acidic chemical compound called flux, a bonding agent that allows a shared copper border to fuse together through the application of melted lead/tin solder.

"You'll need ventilation," Julius explains, opening the garage door. The sky's ensconcing darkness looks like its been dashed with a splash of milk. He solders a few joints, and lets me imitate. We hold up our completed section to the lamp, projecting snatches of color on the shop wall.

It's 3 a.m. and 1,200 miles away, a water tower flickers with life, lighting a city notorious for its insomniacs.

STARDUST

Julius indulges me all week long.

I pepper him with questions. He responds, patient and kind, never talking me down from my outsized ambitions.

"What if you wanted to solder something three dimensional?"

I explain to him my plan to build my son a beacon of his own: some everburning cosmic light he can switch on when he needs companionship in overwhelming dark.

We pattern a 13-shard tile. It's a pattern I'll become intimate with as I replicate its creation 11 times in total. Gradually, it will push its way somewhere deep in the depths of my grey matter, available for recall when my fingers are just a little bit better at dancing on glass.

Julius and I greet our old, star-dusted friend every night that week, hanging their dark, humid cloak somewhere in our workshop. We crack up at grainy footage of people slipping and falling, as flecks of chromatic light dapple the walls.

We trace. We cut. We bond.