Imagicat and Leif

This week I've been doing writing workshops with third through fifth grade classes at an elementary school in Brandon, and using my book, Imagicat, to illustrate both the elements of story and how a kid could write a book. The main characters of the book are an eleven-year-old boy named Jeff and his alter ego, a snippy cat he calls Mortimer.

Jeff's character was modeled on some of the personality traits and actions of my brother Donovan and Leif, so I've been talking a lot about Leif this week and showing a photo of him, along with other photos of people in our family who influenced the characters in the book.

I talk about how Leif, at the age of eleven, didn't really like doing school work, much like Jeff. He didn't mind going to school, he just minded it "following him home." He hated homework. And, like Jeff, he liked to find some way to put his own, original "stamp" on an assignment.

Leif also chose the little kitten that we named Scamp, who became our favorite cat. Scamp was full of fun and we all loved his antics. The kids love hearing about them and how they came to influence the character of Mortimer in the book.

How I love this photo of Leif and Scamp, who provided us with many hours of entertainment and affection. Leif, at eleven, cuddling that little rascal, and wearing his signature black leather Members Only jacket, in the days before he wore glasses, the days before he knew he couldn't achieve his dream of becoming a pilot, the days when he and his friend Robert would come home after school and ask what was happening the the book NOW, and I would read them the latest chapter, the days when they would snicker over it and give me ideas about how to make it better.

Imagicat will always be linked in my mind to Leif, Scamp, and my brother. I'm glad I can share it with over three hundred children this week.

Leif and Lamborghinis

Although Leif loved cars in general, sports cars in particular, and certain ones above the others, I don't think there was ever any car that could quite make it onto the pedestal he had for the Lamborghini Countach or Diablo. He fell in love with the Lamborghinis when he was quite young, before junior high, I think, but by that time he was really enamored and could tell you everything about them. He had a large poster of a black Lamborghini on his bedroom wall when we lived at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, the years from 1986 when he was 11 years old until 1990 when he was 15.

One of the highlights of our time in Chicago (of which there were many) was going to the huge car show where he photographed a lot of fantastic cars. Those that particularly caught his fancy were the concept cars and the Lamborghinis. He would have been in seventh heaven if he could ever have even sat in one. I never knew that he did, but Peter tells me that he got to sit in one at a car show in Hawaii when I wasn't with them, the same show where he met David Hasselhof and saw the "Knight Rider" car, but the surely there would have been a photo.

He took the photo of the white Coutach above at that car show in February 1987 when he had just turned twelve.

At some point (I don't remember when), I gave him a toy black Lamborghini. This wasn't a matchbox car. This one was a about six inches long, a "collector's model," made of metal. He treasured that car, the only Lamborghini he would ever get to own or spend any time with, and I found it among this things after he died and took these photos of it.

His love for the black Lamborghini also inspired me to make that a characteristic of the main character in my middle grade novel, "Imagicat," and Jeff also had the same collector's model. There were other things about Leif that went into the character of Jeff, though Jeff wasn't completely modeled on Leif but rather a fictional composite of several boys.

Leif - Fort Sheridan, Illinois - May 1989 - Age 14

Leif was dressed up for his graduation from Northwood Junior High School and we took a bunch of photos of him horsing around and with our computer setup. He's acting silly, pretending to eat one of the hanging capiz shells on the lamp like a cookie.

The computer setup was a focal point for me, Peter A. and Leif. On the right was our Atari 1040 STf computer and on the left was an Apple IIg. We used them both heavily, though we weren't getting new software for the Apple, just using what we had accumulated in Japan and Hawaii. The Atari we bought in Hawaii when Peter A. convinced me that it was the "poor man's Mac." At that time, Mac was not in color and the Atari 1040 was. There was a lot of good software for it, and we had a great time doing to Northbrook to the store that sold it. The three of us used a word processor, a database program, and a lot of great games.

I especially remember Leif loving the car racing games he played with a joystick, but he also liked a Star Trek game we had, a flight simulator, and one that was really silly called "Death Sword." That was a sword fighting game that was so gruesome it was actually funny. If you were good enough, you could whack off the opponent's head and an ugly little troll would come out and kick it off screen trailing blood that looked like red snakes.

My favorite game was similar to the arcade game Qix (which I loved and would love to have on my Mac) but I don't remember the name of it.

We also had a lot of simpler games that came along with my magazines like STart magazine. Some were a great deal of fun.

I enjoyed having the computers in common with the boys. They gave us something to share and talk about (not that we ever lacked that). I wrote my first novel on the Atari. That was Imagicat. The main character, Jeff, was in some ways an amalgam of my brother, Donovan, and my two sons, Peter A. and Leif. Leif was thirteen when I was finishing the first draft of it at Fort Sheridan in 1988 (though it didn't get published until 2000). He and his friend Robert would come by after school to see what was happening in the story and then they'd get their turn on the computers.

Leif was only 6 or 7 when we got our first computer in Japan and he loved them all his life. He always wanted the best, something powerful for gaming, and he was a heavy user of the internet. Back in Fort Sheridan, there wasn't any internet as we now know it, but there were "bulletin boards" and online services that were nearly exclusively text, such as the one I subscrived to, GEnie. Leif had a taste of that, then, too.

I particularly remember the day I was talking to him about the group of children's writers that had their own "category" on GENie and some were talking about what happened when you put various weird things into the microwave. Leif was fascinated that supposedly responsible adults were doing such things as putting marshmallows and Ivory soap into the microwave just to see what happened. He decided to use my account to ask them something to this effect, "What are responsible adults like you doing putting things into the microwave and blowing them up?" I was thrilled to get an answer from well-known author Bruce Coville, who told him, "I refuse to join the adult conspiracy," and went on to the effect that he might be "grown up" but he wasn't an "adult." Leif got quite a kick out of that.

Leif & Scamp - Fort Sheridan, Illinois - May 1986 - Age 11

Today I spent a long time talking with my grandson, Marcus, about many things, but mostly about my books, especially "Imagicat." He's going to do a report on me and my writing for school (third grade) and was "interviewing me" for some information. I had sent him photos of our two cats that were the inspiration for Mortimer in "Imagicat," and one of them was this cat above in Leif's arms, Scamp. Scamp was just a small kitten in this photo. Leif picked him out at the pet shop and made sure that he picked the most active, "crazy" kitty he could find.

Scamp was such a terrific cat, intelligent, funny, careful, affectionate; the perfect cat for Leif. He loved that kitty! I've written about him and Scamp before, I think. Scamp only lived four and a half years, dying young of an enlarged heart. He, too, was too young to die but brought so much companionship and joy while he lived.

I've been trying to decide how to acknowledge the first anniversary of Leif's death and the day we found him. We had planned to go to the cemetery then, but we were in St. Petersburg yesterday for an event and it seemed right to go then, when we were already over there because I don't know if I should go out of town and leave my mother just a week after she gets out of the rehabilitation facility after breaking her back.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day, the kind of day Leif would have loved to ride his motorcycle under BOB (Big Orange Ball . . . the sun). The birds were singing. It should have been a joyous day, and it would have been, if he were still alive.

I cried my heart out, as I always do, missing him, wishing he were still alive, wondering for the thousandth or ten thousandth time why this had to be.

I thought of the Serenity Prayer, and wondered if accepting the things I cannot change actually does bring serenity. It sounds good, but I think it doesn't always do that, or perhaps my definition of acceptance is different than Reinhold Niebuhr's. Maybe what he means is acquiescence, and that I don't think I will ever have. I know which things I can change and which I can't, but in this case, that's no help, either.

We so often see that first part of the prayer written or quoted, but not the second part, about "Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace," and surrendering to God's will. I can't accept that. Hardships cannot be the way to peace. Not hardships like this. They don't bring peace. They bring misery, sadness, endless questions. And how could something like this be "God's will." A god like that would be cruel. What kind of loving father, earthly or heavenly, would doom his children to a terrible death . . . my son or anyone else's child, any of us. I don't blame God.

But I do wonder, and will always wonder (knowing that life is unfair) why Leif couldn't have had just a scrap of the luck so many people take for granted, just some lasting happiness as an adult, just some achievement he could be proud of. Why did he have to suffer? Why did he have to die?

It's nearly a year and I don't miss him any less. It's a year, but it feels like so much less.