Carnett: Seeing my lost son in children who came after

Though I hadn’t thought about it in decades, I remember it as if it were yesterday. It’s a moment frozen in time.

It was a sunny spring morning in 1970, and I was studying in my second-story bedroom for an exam to be administered later that afternoon in a college classroom.

I could hear whooping, laughter and plastic wheels grinding against concrete pavement a floor below my chamber. I got up, looked out the open window and smiled as I beheld my 2-year-old son joyfully riding his Hot Wheels on the driveway.

He was having a blast.

Did I take a few precious moments away from my studies to go downstairs and join in the exuberance? I did not.

Plenty of time for that later, I reasoned. Self-delusion is the worst kind. You can’t always retrieve what you’ve recklessly discarded.

I allowed myself a minute at the window to enjoy his laughter and wispy blond hair blowing in the breeze. Then, it was back to cramming for my exam.

Today, I’d give anything to relive that moment. But such yearnings are not to be granted this side of eternity. I was too busy that sunny morning — too self-absorbed — to give the miracle its due.

Forty-four years later, my mind unexpectedly returned to that sun-splashed setting. I discovered myself regretting the loss of a priceless moment that had slipped through my fingers. At the time I lived it, the scene seemed prosaic, unremarkable.

Now, as a memory, it’s incandescent.

Its physical reality was borne away like winter fog on a Santa Ana wind. Gone. My son’s whoops and laughter exist now only in the folds and whorls of my brain.

Jimmy’s life was tragically cut short 23 years later, in 1993, at age 25. His voice was stilled long ago. Yet sometimes I hear it and see flashes of his smile and personality in his two nephews, my grandsons.

The Master of the Universe, just days ago, permitted me another morning-sunshine moment and an unplanned remembrance. It was completely providential. This time, at my advanced age, I wasn’t so casual as to ignore it. No banalities — like college exams — would interfere.

I watched my 20-month-old grandson, with wispy blond hair like his uncle, frolic joyfully with my wife — his grandmother — on the back patio. I quite unexpectedly spied the image from my second-floor bedroom window, and my heart was stricken by juxtaposition.

Unlike his uncle, little Judah didn’t climb aboard a Hot Wheels vehicle — do they even make them anymore? — but ran about the patio under a cerulean sky, enthralled with nature and reveling in the goodness of oxygen and sunshine.

The point wasn’t lost on me. I ran to him.

What a unique and beautiful little person. A gift from a compassionate Lord. I’d had no right to expect that I should ever again be so blessed.

As my allotted years pile up, I find myself learning important lessons. There’s much to be realized and, sadly, precious little time in which to tutor this unvarnished curmudgeon. Struggling to comprehend God’s magnificence with my pea brain is frustrating. It’s like having a tea party with a fire hose — messy and painful.

I’m compelled to keep trying.

I’ve learned in retrospect that often what was once considered by me to be important is now inconsequential. And, conversely, what was trifling is now of inestimable value. Perspective alters everything.

I recently took a train through Alaska’s rugged White Pass from the coast at Skagway into the mountains. It was a slow but beautiful grind to the summit. When we reached the top and looked back, the view was breathtaking. There, shimmering like gossamer in the afternoon sunlight, beyond where the mountains rise from the sea, was the Gulf of Alaska, mysterious and beckoning.

On rare occasions, the creator permits glimpses into a realm that lies beyond our grasp. In those moments the human spirit can be deeply stirred.

One glimpse may even change eternity.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.