The Radiance of Kevin: Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment of a Young Man. Chapter One.

We Meet Kevin and His Parents.

Almost from the moment Kevin woke up, Simon pressed his son to go to The Boar’s Head and celebrate his 18th birthday with a pint.

“Go on down there and mingle, Kevin. Yer a good-lookin’ lad, and you might even meet a pretty girl!”

When his dad said that, Kevin cringed inside and remembered the ordeal he had faced as he had grown taller and taller. Despite all his efforts to bulk up, he thought he looked like a bag of bones, and when he looked in the mirror, all he ever saw were flaws.

***

Kevin had taken after his mother’s tall, slim stature, and he assumed that girls preferred the muscular build his rugby star dad had been blessed with. The cruel joke the popular boys made certain he heard throughout his youth was that his dad was a grizzly bear, his mom was a giraffe, and he had turned out to be a creepy praying mantis.

Simon wasn’t as tall as Helen, Kevin’s mom, but he was built like a tank, with all muscles and physical power, and his dynamic personality made him seem much taller. He dominated every room he entered and had been a force on the rugby field as a hooker throughout his youth and into his early 30s. “As good as Brian Moore!” Simon would boast. The Boar’s Head proudly displayed photos of him in action, and after he retired, he coached until he was forty-five when his whole world fell apart.

All Helen had wanted when she was young was to be a ballerina. When she was 14, her ballet class went to London to see Gelsey Kirkland perform in Romeo and Juliet as a guest artist with The Royal Ballet. That performance etched itself on Helen’s heart. She had never been more inspired.

Helen's career seemed assured when she won the Genée Gold Medal at the Margot Fonteyn International Ballet Competition at the age of 17. She was accepted into The Royal Ballet shortly after her win. When she became a principal dancer, her first role was Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. She studied the video of Gelsey Kirkland’s Juliet for hours to prepare.

Simon’s girlfriend then dragged him to what turned out to be Helen’s first performance as Juliet. She hoped that seeing Romeo and Juliet would make Simon more romantic, and when she glanced at him in the darkened theater, she saw a tear in his eye and felt sure that her mission had succeeded. But her plan backfired. When Simon saw Helen as Juliet, he was struck by an overwhelming emotion he couldn’t identify. All he knew was that he had to meet that woman.

At first, he was intimidated when he finally met Helen at a London coffee shop. She seemed as delicate as a fine china cup yet unusually strong simultaneously. He felt like an awkward, lumbering bloke and knew he’d never see her again. Two months later, they were married.

Helen’s passion for a performing career evaporated when she married Simon, but her love for ballet never left her. She discovered that teaching was her calling when she opened a small ballet school for the children in the village where Simon played rugby. Her students’ devotion and love made up for her lingering longing for the stage, and teaching also satisfied her because she could contribute to the household and set aside some money for herself.

The success of her ballet school made her and Simon put off having a baby for ten years. When she got pregnant, she continued her classes almost until the day Kevin was born. But she soon discovered that tending to a newborn was exhausting, and with Simon’s encouragement, she sold the school to a friend who had also been a student with her. Over the years, she attended every school recital, and the children never failed to be thrilled to see her.

This short story is being released as a serial in the tradition (if not literary excellence) of Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stove, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others.

Chapter Two is next Sunday! Hope to see you then.

Thanks to Tommy C for the nudge to get this story out there.