Stephan Doyle

by his “sistah” Bree James
12-25-07

When I moved from Sunol to Sebastopol in November, 2003, Stephan was my official mover…really, he bid against professional movers, won the job and, of course, offered customer service above and beyond anything one could pay for. For example, he and I had picked out quite a selection of quarry rocks for my house in Sunol, and unbeknownst to me, brought every heavy one of them to Sebastopol. Some are neatly lining my front path, smaller ones edge my back yard, but then there’s the pile in the corner, creating a mountain range for my Yorkie, Viva. He backed his truck in, dropped ‘em out, and there they stay, never high enough on a To Do list during his future visits to be added to the landscape. I love them there. They are out of order, not to spec, and wonderful to look at and marvel at their solidness and beauty. Not so different from Stephan, if I think about it.

But Christmas…it’s Christmas Day, and I want to share a story about Stephan and Christmas. If he has one rule about Christmas, it’s, “There’s no such thing as too many lights.” I was a bit of a zombie my first Christmas here – also my first alone after almost 25 years of marriage. Stephan came up to visit and marched me off to Longs for many packages of icicle lights, which he put up on my new house, in the rain, and gloriously everywhere. It’s a compact house in an older neighborhood and I knew not a soul yet on my street, but they knew I had landed…my spaceship glowed in the night, a brown-shingle rocket on the launching pad, lit up so bright, it surely looked as if it were ready to blast off into space. An embarrassment of sparkle, turning a nice but ordinary house into a dramatic spectacle, outdoing everyone on the block.

Not so different from Stephan, if I think about it.

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