Crystal Clear Ch. 32

When asked to speculate about the baby following in their parent's footsteps in the music and entertainment business, the pair burst out laughing. Mellon said in a humorous tone, "Ask us in about twenty years."

Mellon has fathered three other children. Two with Summer Ellis, whose husband George is a war veteran with Mellon, and one child with Edie Gerst, a single-mother and reporter for the Dayton Daily News, and a correspondent for the New York Times and the British Broadcasting Company. Ellis and Gerst, both love interests of Mellon, took part in the special commitment ceremony with Mellon last year. They remain in close contact as Mellon continues his part-time father role with each of those children. George Ellis formally adopted these three children in an open adoption with Mellon's blessing.

About a year ago, Mellon married Crystal Lee, as well as made similar commitments to Ellen Lee, Crystal's sister, and Claire Whitman, a close friend and movie star, and seven other women. Jim Mellon, Crystal Lee, and Claire Whitman completed the blockbuster movie for Sony Entertainment entitledTriangle, and the trio has been engaged in making a sequel to the box office smash hit to be entitled 'Vectors'. Filming for the new picture isn't expected to complete until this fall with a possible release by the Christmas.

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Crystal had just nursed KK, as we'd started to call her, and then the baby had gone back to sleep; she was a good baby and easy to care for. I would do a round with her around eleven o'clock, just before I went to bed. Crystal was leading us through the angst of hiring a nanny, but so far none of the people who had applied for the position met our strict requirements. She was also struggling to get back to the weight she'd had before she got pregnant.

Crystal, Ellen, Claire, and I loved the back patio of the Nashville home looking across the pool into the woods where the sure signs of spring were now showing. Sunset would come in another hour. Slightly behind us, a space heater warmed the immediate air around us, warding off the evening chill. Crystal and Ellen were snuggled in under my arms on each side of me; Claire contentedly snuggled up against Crystal. I'd spread a blanket across the four of us. We weren't feeling particularly aroused, just in one of those moods where we were especially comfortable to be in each other's presence and to be physically and intimately touching each other.

I spoke, "Sure seems empty around here without the others hanging around – Nadia, Sean, Terry, and the others."

Ellen chortled, "Just us old folks, huh?"

I laughed because Ellen hadn't turned thirty that long ago.

Crystal nuzzled into my neck a little more and said, "This is cozy. I like it. I like when the others come by or stay with us, but you three are the rocks that anchor my life. I love you – you know: mind, body, and spirit."

We agreed with her. We were the core foursome around whom the others orbited. We were the rocks for each other, and we loved each other in all dimensions of the soul. We loved the others in the same measure.

We sat in silence for a long time, just appreciating each other's presence and our closeness. Occasionally, one of us would get the urge to kiss someone close to them. The love and tenderness in the early evening were palpable.

From the woodsy trail in the backyard where Crystal and I often ran, we heard the snapping of a few twigs. A regal buck appeared at the trailhead without a fear in the world; head held high with a start on what would become a splendid rack of antlers. He looked around and spotted us; and even as we moved slightly so we could follow the magnificent animal he showed no fear.

He snorted a couple of times in a non-aggressive manner. Behind him, then came a sleek doe and close behind her a speckled fawn that couldn't have been more than a couple of weeks old.

The trio of deer walked peacefully across the backyard, occasionally sniffing the ground, and then pausing to look at us as our heads followed them with our mouths agape. They felt no fear. Maybe they felt the love that we had for them and that we felt for each other.

I wondered if the buck or doe had grown from the fawn I'd seen years earlier shortly after I'd moved in with Crystal after my road trip. We'd each traveled so many miles since then, and endured a few hardships along the way. The older deer also looked old enough to have seen many miles in their journeys through life the same way we had. Slowly, as though to show his bravado, the buck slowly strutted in a circle right in front of us, and then slowly moved to the start of the trail into the woods on the other side of the yard, but he paused there waiting for his mate and offspring to follow.

The doe looked at us and shook her head slightly as though to say 'Hello'. The fawn had come a little closer to where we sat, displaying precocious curiosity. At a brief snort from his mother, the fawn backed away from its approach, but continued to study us – almost as though it was memorizing what we looked like for a future 'safe' visit.

Just for kicks I nodded slowly at the doe to say thank you for visiting. Surprisingly, she nodded back, turned, and pranced away in no particular rush with the fawn in close file. She didn't bolt or run; she pranced in such an elegant way. The fawn walked haltingly behind her following his mother, and not even attempting to duplicate her dance steps. The trio of deer turned and looked back at us before slowly disappearing into the woods.

The moment touched me as a similar moment had years earlier when I'd just come back from a run and started a meditation in the small clearing at the edge of our acreage. I remembered every second and every emotion I had felt then when a doe and fawn had appeared, and I felt each of them now in the same intense way as I hugged Crystal, Ellen, and Claire, and kissed each of them.

I had so much to be thankful for.