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LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY
Tiny Toes
I had seen my brother experience fatherhood from a distance. I married a woman with two children
from a previous relationship, and I worked very hard to become a father to them before I had my
own daughter. But not until my cousin Max, and my best friend, became a father did I truly
experience that magic for the first time.

Max married young, right out of college, which for Max was young, given he started at fourteen.
Oddly enough, Max's wife Amanda was in the same boat, and they sailed through UCLA together as
this unbeatable team, earning their first bachelor's degrees before going off to MIT for the rest. And
the whole family loved Amanda, so there was never any doubt how that was going to turn out.

When they told us that they were expecting their first child as he worked on his doctoral degree, no
one was surprised they hadn't waited very long to start their family. Max and I had always talked
very openly, and he would often tell me that his only regret in life was that his parents took so long
finding each other, because he would have liked to have known his father as a younger man.
Frequently, he told me how much he envied me for having a younger father. He never said this to
his parents, but with me he could be honest about his feelings.

When his first child was born, I think we were all surprised by the name he had picked out for his
son; Thomas James Grissom. We weren't surprised that he hadn't named the boy after his father,
because Uncle Gil had given VERY strict instructions that Gilbert had better end with Mikey's middle
name, or he was going to haunt the next four generations of the family.

I wasn't even that surprised that he named the boy after my father, because Pop had been his
football coach and favorite pseudo uncle his whole life. No, I was shocked and dumbfounded that he
would name the kid after me. But nothing could have prepared me for his answer when I asked him
about the honor.

Max told me that he wanted his son to know a world with the strength of the men in his family, as
well as the women, and naming him after my father and me was the way he planned to start it off.
He said that my father overcame a very difficult childhood to become a doctor and one of the best
husbands, fathers and friends he had ever known, and it was important for him to honor that
accomplishment. Then he told me that he gave him the middle name of James because it was not
only the name of his best friend, and the man he would have as his godfather, but it was also the
name of two very strong men in the history of his family.

The man for whom I was named was the one all of us kids just called Papa Jim. He was way more
than an uncle, and none of us had a living grandfather, so Papa Jim just sort of fit into the role. He
was also the man that stood up for my Aunt Sara when she got married, took care of my parents
when there was a threat on their lives before I was born, and he was the man everyone went to
when they were in trouble. No matter how big or small it was, Papa Jim was the one to take care of
all of us. Even Uncle Gil went to him, from time to time.

So, when Max brought little Tommy home to Vegas the first time, I told him to come by my studio. I
wanted to do something really special for them, and I had been doing a lot of side work on
portraiture at the time (just to make ends meet), so I had the setup for some great baby pictures.

When they got there, Max told me he really wasn't interested in some cheesy baby pictures, and I
was instantly worried. He pulled out my "Bests" book from my desk and handed it to me. What he
said next nearly did me in. He said, "I want something you'd be proud enough to put in there. I want
to see what fatherhood looks like through your eyes, through that camera lens." And those tiny toes
held softly in his reverent hands...that's what how I saw it.