No such thing, though. Luke was a little sweetie. When he was born we were not only thrilled he was a boy, but also that he cried like a normal newborn. When we heard that little "nyaah, nyaah," Randy and I looked at each other and laughed. He was a big guy, though, 9 lbs, 15 oz. Not a fun delivery let me tell you. It was fast but felt like he was banging his way out of me. Twice I pulled the headboard bars out of their sockets. When the baby arrived, Randy said to me, "I can't wait to tell Charlie [his brother]. He has to wait 24 hours for his." I wanted to punch him -- both on my own behalf after the worst two hours of my life, and my poor sister-in-law's who went through such long labor. Men!
But of course, all was forgotten (well, forgiven anyway) as we fell in love a second time. His sister Cori loved her new baby brother, too. It was hard to get any photos of Luke without Cori's little head getting between him and the camera as she just HAD to give him kisses. She did regress a tiny bit. While I was nursing, a few times Cori would come by and suddenly "trip" and fall, needing my immediate attention.
Luke was born a charmer. As soon as he could carry on a conversation, he knew how to get on people's right side and help them to see how much they wanted to do what he wanted them to do. He was also a joker, loving to make people laugh. More than one teacher told us in parent-teacher conferences that it was difficult to get Luke to stop fooling around when they themselves were laughing.
One of his little jokes was when he was probably around 10 or so. My parents were visiting and some time before that my mother had sent us a little box of prayer cards that we used for our after dinner prayer. Sometimes the kids would read one, sometimes one of us. At the very beginning of dinner this night, Luke said, "I want to read the prayer," and then reminded us several times during the course of the meal. So, of course, when dinner was over, we gave Luke the nod. He proudly pulled out a card and read, "Prayers for all Occasions. Published by Whatever Publishing Company. Copyright 1981." He read the title card! We all cracked up and he beamed. What a little nut.
He liked doing things with his hands. He and his buddy Jason, a neighbor two doors down, played Legos, cars, liked building things with scrap wood, that kid of thing. Randy made the kids a treehouse in our backyard and one Saturday he and the kids were going to paint it. I overheard Luke saying to his brother or sister, "This is the day I've been waiting for!" He was so excited to paint that treehouse. What a cutie.
I felt blessed that my kids loved each other and got along well, much better than it had been with me and my siblings when we were kids. They fought, of course, and more than I knew as I discover when they talk about some memories now as adults. But my friend Ann told me about what she overheard when she, her husband, Luke and his brother Zach and Randy were on a houseboat for a fishing trip. As they were getting ready for bed she heard Zach in his bottom bunk saying to Luke, "I love you, Luke," and Luke answered, "I love you, too, Bud."
Luke has always been very sociable, too. He and Jason knew pretty much everyone in the neighborhood. Even to this day when Luke comes home to visit he can usually fill us in on all the neighbors' news within a few days of being here. And he's kind of a wheeler-dealer, too. I think that goes along with his charm. He's good at making trades or selling things off that he no longer wants. He even does well purchasing broken down things knowing he can fix them and sell them for a profit.
As a kid, things were easy with Luke. He was happy, tried to please, things were good. Once he got to driving age, although he was still fun and fun to be around, things got more difficult as Luke did some experimenting with drinking and getting into some trouble. Although he was the best driver in the family -- he got a straight 100% on his driving test -- he had more tickets than I could keep track of. It got to the point where my heart would start to beat faster as soon as I saw Luke's name on the caller id of my phone. I was kind of in a perpetual state of waiting for the next shoe to drop. Yet, through it all, we got along with Luke fine. We weren't arguing, he wasn't really rebelling. I felt like he was just on two parallel tracks - the Luke I'd always known and that he really still was, and the Luke deciding to do things he knew he shouldn't, but going down that path anyway.
School was not Luke's thing. Once high school was done he was looking for a place he could go where, as he said, he would "never have to take another English class." Another neighbor told us about the tech school he'd gone to, to learn to be an auto mechanic, called "Universal Technical Institute" (UTI) in Phoenix. We met with a rep and it sounded like a really good fit for Luke. He thought so, too, but he didn't immediately fill in the application and do what needed to be done to move forward. In the meantime, he started working at the furniture company where I work.
One day he called me on his way home and said he couldn't breathe. I told him to go to the doctor right away, which he did. Then he called and said the doctor had told him his lung was collapsed and he should go to the ER. I couldn't believe the doctor had him drive himself! (It was not our regular family doctor.) Randy and I drove to the ER and when I got there I went to the window and got them to take a look at him quickly. Turned out it was spontaneous ablation of the lung, which is rather common for tall, thin, Caucasian young men. Who'd've known? The ER doctor said that we had probably never heard of it (true) but that in the ER it was well known, which we saw as one person after another came in the room, looked at Luke and immediately knew.
To treat it, they put in a tube that would drain the area around the lung and allow the lung to expand back out. In Luke's case, however, that didn't seem to work. They decided to do micro-surgery. And after that, he kept bleeding so much they had to go back in and do regular thoracic surgery. Obviously I don't know all the technical terms and reasoning, but poor Luke was miserable. Everything they gave him for pain made him sick, and because he was in pain he wasn't breathing deeply enough. It was a vicious cycle. And he's always been a really picky eater so nothing they brought him appealed to him. One kind nurse even told him she'd treat him and order pizza but even that wasn't cutting it. I brought him thermoses of "thick chicken soup," where I combine cream of chicken and chicken noodle with milk and water.
He ended up spending 10 days in the hospital. I have always thought that those 10 days, along with a wonderful loving letter that Randy wrote to him, finally made him look around and think he should do something with his life. Shortly after the hospital stay, he filled in the UTI application, left it on the table and asked me to mail it in for him. Soon he was on his way to Phoenix. He and I took a trip down there together first, to meet with the school and start looking at apartments. When it was time to actually move down there, Randy took him.
It was a big step for him to go off to a big city on his own, start living in his own apartment and going to school like that. I had gone to high school in Phoenix so he went to the Orangewood CRC where we had gone, and that gave him at least a little support. Luke did very well at UTI. He told us once about how fun it was to often be the smart kid in the class that other people asked questions. It definitely was a good fit for him. After school was done he worked in several different jobs as a diesel mechanic which was what he specialized in. Now he's working as a contractor for the Toyota Proving Grounds down there and talk about a good fit. His second day on the job he called and said he'd driven around a track over 100 mph, handed the keys over to the boss, and the boss said, "Good job."
Luke met and married his wife Desiray while living in Phoenix. We are grateful to have her in our family and it's been wonderful to watch the two of them grow in their love for each other and for God. They have a darling little daughter named Delaney who was the apple of our eye as well as theirs. She was our first grandchild! Her sister Lydia was born several years later and our joy was multiplied.
Luke, Des, and the girls moved to San Jose when Luke got a transfer to a position in the Bay Area. After living with us for a while, they moved to an apartment and then purchased a home in Livermore.
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