Friendship, Part II

I begged my editor for another day. This was a sensitive story. I wanted time to think about and figure out the best way to approach it.

"No," he said. "You've got 20 minutes. Write it."

Fortunately, no matter how much I protest, deadline writing is often my best.

I wrote thinking about what I so admired about this family. They did not attempt to cram their beliefs down anyone's throats, saying, "Our way is the right, and only, way." They said instead, "These are our beliefs. We know the world may think we're crazy. We ask only for your respect."

Somehow, I think this came across.

The next morning, the phone began to ring with callers praising the story. E-mails poured in, among them a letter to the editor submitted by Zion's grandparents. They were all grateful, they said, for the way in which they'd been portrayed.

I met Paul, the toddler's father, the next day when I went by the house to pick up a picture of his son. I was struck by them both; Paul's startling blue eyes and fierce bear hug, and the photo of his astoundingly beautiful son who had his father's bright eyes and a round face framed by ringlets of blonde hair. I took it in my hands and felt he had given me a gift, a tiny piece of his heartbreak. Ever the journalist, I knew the readers' hearts also would ache when they saw the child's picture.

Once the Summit Daily broke the story, newspapers and media nationwide descended on the family's home. Paul called my editor.

"Do we have to speak to them?" he said. "We don't want to. We don't want to talk to any reporter but Jane."

The media then began calling me. The local radio station asked to interview me. I said no. A co-worker suggested I call the National Enquirer. He assured me I could get at least $1,000 for the story. He offered to make the call for me; he had friends there, he said. He was flabbergasted when I said no. Suffice to say Andy and I never were good friends.

Instead, the other media ran wire versions of my stories.

The family kept their toddler's body in their home for more than two weeks. During that time, I met his mother. She answered the door when I returned the photo. I was struck by her as I'd been by the entire family. Even in grief, she was pretty. I saw a grieving woman with frosted blonde hair, wide, green eyes and a wide mouth that I knew, when lifted in a smile, transformed her into someone remarkably beautiful. Her smile that day was weak, her hug firm.

I wrote the final story almost three weeks after the boy died. The family buried his small body somewhere in Colorado Springs, with the support and blessings of a church with whom they felt connected.

With that, I thought, the story and my connection to the Jungcks also was buried.

I moved to Colorado Springs and on with what I thought was the pinnacle of my career, putting even such extraordinary stories as theirs in my mental file folders.

I knew the experience had changed me, and I would never forget Paul's words: That we as humans can't begin to contemplate all that God can do.

It is precisely how I feel. While the Jungcks find this truth in Christianity, it fit just as well with my own sense of the divine and the only religion - Unitarianism - I've found that seems generous enough in its definitions to make me feel comfortable. Some may say it's the coward's way out, religion in the most general, vague sense. But for whatever reason - the twists and turns of my religious upbringing, my parent's sad marriage, my early traumas or simply my own logic - I can't wrap my arms around any one truth.

Regardless of all that, I temporarily forgot the Juncks. My life was going forward and they, I thought, were part of my past.

I was then, as I am now, a stranger in a new city. So the last thing I expected was to hear my name in the neighborhood Albertson's. I turned to see a man with startling blue eyes, a boy of about Robby's age at his side.

"It's Paul," he said.

I felt no click of recognition.

"Our son died, and you wrote about it," he said.

We hugged, struggled for words and settled on the politeness of strangers.

The family had moved to Colorado Springs to join the church that seemed to most closely match their beliefs, the very church that I came to associate with all that was wrong with Colorado Springs. A church whose leader, a close friend of President Bush's, believes gays are immoral and hellbound, that a woman's right to choose is not a choice at all, that marriage is worthy of preservation at all costs. It symbolized every reason, and in its extremism even more, I had turned away from traditional religion.

But a connection had been made months ago between this family and I. It pulled us together across our differences.

Paul's wife, Valerie and I, met a week or later at the neighborhood library. She suggested we go hiking. I agreed, sensing it would be a disaster.

It was, instead, the beginning of a friendship. Valerie believes God guides our every decision, and plays a part in all that happens to us. He took her son for a reason. I believe the opposite, that we are given all the tools we need to make our own way. That we are largely responsible for the twists and turns of our own lives. That sometimes, bad things just happen. Perhaps I am the sadder for believing I am the wiser.

But Valerie has a torrid past, a long spell of disbelief and rebellion, an affair with a married minister and sometimes still questions the God she believed in. She is kind, admittedly sometimes confused, human, accepting and loving. She is a woman, just like me.

Just before I moved, we took a long walk together. She talked about the kind of church she wanted, one she had yet to find: It welcome people of all varieties. Tattooed, rebellious and loud along with quiet, calm and conservative. She railed against a church from which they'd been encouraged to leave for singing too loud. Faith, she said, should be shouted to the rooftops if the spirit so moved you.

I thought that we were not so far apart. I didn't ask her how gays fit in to this church; I liked her vision and didn't want to risk blighting it. I liked knowing that we were, in many more ways than not, kindred spirits. I wanted to leave our friendship on the hopeful note we struck there, on top of a mountain overlooking Colorado Springs - the city I'd come to resent so for the hatred its most vocal residents seemed to me to perpetuate.

Valerie and I still e-mail. She told me that after years of fear and hesitancy, she and Paul had decided to adopt. They gave their hearts to a 2-year-old from an abusive home. Their hearts broke when the foster family adopted her instead. She's scared now, she told me, to open up again. In her last e-mail, I heard her determination and optimism ring through again. What she really wanted, she said, was a boy. It was time, she said, way past time in fact, to be pragmatic.

My response to her was, strangely, less pragmatic. I told her there is a child out there, waiting for her, and he's lucky beyond all compare. This, I know, is true.