60 in 60. #5 Jordan

I am reflecting on the last 60 years, and writing 60 blog posts in 60 days. 30 about people and 30 about events and experiences.

 

I was outvoted when our third child was born. I wanted to call him Spike but the combined bloc of wife and mother-in-law vetoed my wishes so we settled on calling him Jordan. It’s a fine name and is often shortened to Jordy and Jord but Carolyn admits now that she thinks we should have called him Spike. Each of our children is unique, each has their strengths and weaknesses, and each of them is dearly loved. Jordy was a character right from the beginning. He had some developmental delay causing floppy muscle tone and was born with Nystagmus, a condition that makes his eyes move back and forth continually. One of his paediatricians even speculated that he may be blind. None of this ever held him back from becoming a funny, adventurous, curious and irrepressible little boy. Physiotherapy addressed the body tone and he became strong and “ripped” as a kid. One of my favourite pictures of Jordy was taken when I discovered him on the roof of my lime green Holden station wagon, waving a stick around in swash-buckling pirate style. For a couple of years, every day when I arrived home from work he would come racing out of the house and the moment I opened the car door he would launch himself into my arms. We played a lot of backyard soccer after school. 

 

Around about this time we started going to Augusta every January as part of the Scripture Union Beach Mission team. Jordy loved the big team environment and attached himself to one of the team members, Angela for two weeks. A year or two later it could have ended in tragedy. Once the big marquee was set up he and a few kids were jumping off the bonnet of one of the 4WDs nearby when he landed on the top of a star picket, slicing open his inner thigh. Thankfully we had a doctor on the team who took him to the local hospital and stitched him up. A few centimetres to the side and he could have cut his femoral artery… .  Jordan and Zach both loved reading and when he was about 9 I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy to him as a bedtime story over a period of several months. In an unplanned coincidence, the night I read the passage in which the One Ring was destroyed, when Frodo cast it into the fires of Mt Doom, was March 25, the very same date it occurred in the story. 

 

We moved to Busselton when Jordy was 13 and it was a good move for him. He made lasting friendships and developed a bond with Busso and the south-west that endures to the present day despite the fact that we moved to Victoria over ten years ago. 

Having taken Zach and Sophie to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, I engineered a way to take Jordan and Paul to the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne by organising a trip for a group of kids from Busso high school where I was the chaplain. It was a great trip but one of my clearest memories is of Jordy’s horror at the boxing, aghast at seeing people punching one another into submission.

 

He surprised us when playing the part of the pirate-ship cook, ‘Sam O’Nella’ in a school production of ‘The Pinafore Pirates’. I knew he was theatrical but hadn’t known he could sing. After that success he got a part in ‘The Boyfriend’ in a production in Margaret River, followed by winning the part of a punk in the British medical farce, ‘It Runs in the Family’. Another unplanned turn of events saw me get the part of the policeman in the play. Acting together was one of the highlights of my life as we found ourselves performing to packed houses for three successive weekends and, to my utter surprise the audiences loved it and were rolling in the aisles. I did a passable job but Jordy was a star. 

Jordan has had a few challenges along the way, and used a few unorthodox strategies to deal with them. He has always had great self-awareness and been completely open and honest about his choices and actions. He’s led a somewhat nomadic life for several years, spending time in both Victoria  and WA, working in a range of jobs but never settling.

He met a girl online and went to America to meet her and see if it would work in the real world. It didn’t survive but it was a great experience and opportunity.

 

Jordy is creative and passionate, a non-conformist with anarchist tendencies. His ability to find strange, bizarre and incomprehensible (to me) memes and websites is extraordinary.

He is blunt and fearlessly honest and can be harsh and judgemental at times. He gets fired up about stuff and pissed off with people. 

Yet, no matter what is going on in his life and his head, he knows with absolute certainty that we love him, just as I know with the same certainty that he loves us. That love has held him securely through some dark and difficult times and he knows it and is grateful for it. 

 

There have been some really positive things going on in the last few months. Despite the restrictions and inconveniences caused by Covid, Jordy has found a place to live which is working out well for him and is studying music production at TAFE in Margaret River which he is loving. While his choice of music doesn’t appeal to me (surprise surprise, death metal is not to my liking) he is really enjoying the course, accumulating equipment and tools to help him pursue his music and currently preparing for his first public performance. It is exciting and gratifying seeing him find something he loves and to hear the enthusiasm and excitement he feels about it.

I wish he was closer and that we could see him more often, but I am very happy that he is doing something he loves and living in a place that feels like home.