Son of Gildrick

You knew Ivan Gildrick as a saint. As more than a man; one of the few who walked among humanity while seeming at the same time to glide above it. A legend, a living myth. Every word he spoke was written down by someone, sold off to someone else, and at some point relayed to you from tiny speakers inside a car or adjacent to flashing screens of loudly colored lights. A true Man, someone said; Gildrick was just that. A model for the rest of us. God’s first truly great gift to humanity, Jesus set aside.

It’s been twenty-two years since Ivan Gildrick died. Twenty-two years to the day. My birthday.

You knew him as a philanthropist; a man who gave half of every paycheck he’d ever earned to those worse off, as the billionaire who single-handedly furnished ninety percent of all the hospitals in Africa. You knew him as the philosopher who wrote logic into the meaning of your life, the inventor of the only diet pill that ever worked. You knew him as the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize; the only man ever to win two different categories the same year. You knew him as the best loved man alive, a man greater in stature than any in history. You worshipped him, his celebrity. You licked your lips every time you heard his name, saw his face on the television screen. You remember where you were, what you were doing, when you learned of his passing. You wept.

As did I. The midwives pulled my from my mother’s belly and one stuck her finger down my throat to make sure I would breathe. My mother’s body quivered and I squalled; a small bundle of flesh, alien in my premature surroundings. It’s easy to imagine. She, the one whose breast should have fed me, drowned in grief while I hung in another’s arms, oblivious to any tragedy; oblivious to everything but the light and the cold. It’s easy to see. That as my mother took her last breath, the woman who so wished I was hers whispered in my ear.

“Adam.”

You knew Ivan Gildrick as a god. In this way, you and I, we are almost similar. My life began in the shadow of his death. And I grew, a boy alone among his companions, friendless and envied.

You knew him as many things. To me, he was two.

Secondly, he was my father.

Firstly, he was God.