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As children everyone learns the mythology. The Platonic explanation that once all humans had two faces, four arms, four legs and one soul. The gods grew fearful of the humans and their power though they did not wish to destroy them for then where would they get tribute. And so instead they cut each in half, creating two beings with one face, two arms, two legs and only half of a soul and humans despaired and cried out in terror and loneliness. And some of the gods felt sorrow and took pity on their worshipers and created a way for them to once again find and connect to the other half of their split soul. But they had to work with other gods who were not as sorrowful but instead scared of the potential held within humans which had led to the original solution. And so, once a year a soul who has reached puberty will see through the eyes of their mate for only ten minutes and only the sight sense engaged. In this manner they can receive clues to help locate their soul's mate.
All children know this story, gaining more knowledge of its truths and fictions the older they grow, the closer to puberty and their own first vision they come. Many people do actually find their mates and live happily but it is not always an easy task. After all, the fearful gods did not want their hard work undone by making it simple for the humans to find the missing halves. And here is a tale of two halves of one soul and their striving to find one another in this lifetime. A tale of two men named Jonathan and Anthony and how they came to meet and bond their halves together into the single soul they once were.
Edward O'Neill looked at Jill, his wife of 2 years incredulously. “You want to do what? It's January for crying out loud! I am not going skinny dipping in Minnesota in January, I don't care how private your dad's cabin is.”
Jill laughed. “But it would be fun to warm each other up afterward, Ted,” she chuckled.
He leered at her. “I can warm you up without freezing us to death first, baby.” He reached for her and she giggled and ran towards the bedroom as he chased after her, finally catching up to her and tossing her on the bed, only to follow her down and lay on top of her. The couple began to kiss and soon lost themselves in the moment and being together on their vacation, alone. Their love for one another would create a new life this day, a son, though they would not know of the child for several weeks or its gender for nine months.
“You're doing wonderfully, Mrs O'Neill. I can see the head. Just one more good push and your baby will be here. Just focus and push!” The doctor instructed the expectant mother.
“I'm pushing, already!” Jill's face was damp with sweat and her face tracked with tears following her 9 long hours of labor. She took a deep breath, grunted with the effort and pushed hard and was rewarded with the wail of a baby. She pushed herself up with the little strength she had left and gazed towards the doctor.
“It's a boy! Congratulations Mrs O'Neill, you have a son!” The doctor smiled at her and she gave a wobbly smile back as she fell back on the bed panting. The nurse placed the small wrapped bundle on her chest and Jill smiled more broadly.
“Hello, little one. My little prince. I love you, Jonathan Jay O'Neill.”
Jonathan Jay O'Neill, better known to friends and family as Jackie-boy, was laying on his back in a field and staring up at the stars. It was one of his favorite activities. He was only 8 but he knew the names and locations of the major constellations, namely the zodiac, the Orion Family, the Perseus Family and the Ursa Major Family. He was working on learning the Hercules Family next. He loved the stars and the sky, it fascinated him that the same bits of light he was watching from his backyard were the ones that the Ancient Greeks who they were named for saw.
Jackie-boy was a good kid. He listened to his parents (most of the time), was nice to and helped take care of his little sister Ruth as long as she wasn't trying to look at his telescope, got good grades in school without too much effort, and rarely swore in company and hardly ever talked back sass to an adult. He thought a lot of sass that he technically could talk back but he learned at his dad's hard hand and his mum's hard hair brush on his butt to keep his remarks in his head not out of his mouth. He also had discovered quickly enough that he didn't enjoy the taste of soap or castor oil. And when he started school, he found that a ruler across the knuckles hurt just as sharply as his dad's palm on his butt. So, he kept his sass to himself and gained a reputation as a fairly quiet lad.
Jackie enjoyed his time at school. He liked to learn things but to keep himself out of trouble he rarely spoke up there so his grades were fairly high but the teachers did not consider him exceptional. He listened a lot and learned to hear not just what people were saying but what they didn't say. He watched how other kids were treated based on how they behaved and tried to adjust himself to present what he wanted them to see. He was not always entirely successful, especially around his mother and maternal grandfather. They saw through his mask and almost always called him on it.
Jackie loved spending time with his maternal grandfather, Martin MacArthur. His granddad had a cabin in northern Minnesota next to a lake and when Jackie was just a toddler, his family had moved from Chicago to Grand Rapids, a town of about 11,000 people 40 minutes from the cabin and lake. His granddad told him that he was a true Irish boy from two proud Celtic lines and he had to be a true warrior to live up to his heritage.
Granddad had served in World War I and told Jackie stories from his battlefield days. Jackie's mom didn't like these stories but knew it was futile to try to get her father to keep quiet. He had brought her up on many of the same tales but somehow, maybe because she was a female, they didn't have quite the same effect on her. Jackie soaked up the tales of daring and heroism, beating the bad guys and helping their fellow soldiers to keep America safe.
In order to try to offset some of the violence Jackie was exposed to via her father, Jill O'Neill would spend time with her son telling him tales of kindness and love. She often told and was often asked to tell, of her searching and meeting of her husband, the other half of her soul, Edward O'Neill. It wasn't a terribly dramatic story like some soul mate tales were. Nor was it a particularly boring tale where two soul mates grow up across the street from one another, attending the same schools and knowing immediately who the other is with the onset of vision time.
Jill O'Neill nee MacArthur was from a very small town in upper Minnesota. Edward “Ted” O'Neill was from the big city of Chicago. The two mates met ironically in Washington, DC when Jill was there on a mate search and Ted was living there for a while after being released from the Army. She had her vision that year of a man in uniform visiting the Washington Monument and even though she worried and knew it was a long shot, she trusted in God to lead her to her soul mate.
Jill literally stumbled over Ted when getting off of a trolley she was taking to tour the city. She tripped on the bottom step and would have taken a hard fall onto the pavement but instead a gallant man grabbed her and swung her away to the sidewalk. He helped to steady her on her feet and when she raised her eyes to thank him, his eyes met hers and the bond swirled around them.
The story of Jill's search and their meeting was a favored request as a bedtime story and Jackie often said he could not wait until he began having his vision time. Whenever she heard him express these longings, Jill warned her son that not all soul mates had an easy time finding one another. And the only reason Jill and Ted had done so was because she took the initiative to go looking when a vision gave a definitive clue as to a location. Ted was never able to go looking because none of the visions he experienced were enough to give him any kind of location that he could recognize. There were lots of small towns around and without hearing sounds or accents he couldn't pin it down. But the Washington Monument was unmistakeable. Still, it was luck or fate because he could have just been visiting the city that day and not living there.
Also, Jill reminded Jackie that his visions would start when his body started to change as he grew up and many experienced visions for many years before finding a good clue. Jill herself had been getting visions for seven years before she found Ted. He had gotten visions for nine years before that fateful day when his mate tumbled into his arms. So, she warned her son not to worry about growing up too fast. It would come when it was time and when it did, he would learn the good and the bad for himself.
Jackie-boy lay on his back in that field looking at the stars and whispered into their twinkling embrace, “I'll find you, I know it. I know you're looking at these same stars as me and we'll find one another and be happy forever.”
Jackie-boy O'Neill