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Few books are as special as the ones our parents used to read to us to make us go to sleep. Over the years we might outgrow the singsong sentences and fantastical plots (then again, we might not). The pages might yellow and tear, or become incomprehensible beneath layers of crayon and peanut butter fingerprints. We might even misplace these paper treasures, or pass them on to smaller hands; but we do not forget them. They stay with us as vessels for our oldest memories.
For Ryan Semonin of New Kent, though, the best bedtime stories didn’t come with a glossy cover or illustrations. They were told to him by his mother, Terri Sebastian, as she read aloud from a stack of handwritten pages. The stories were her own, or perhaps, more appropriately, they were Ryan’s, as each story was directly inspired by Terri’s interactions with her inquisitive three-year-old son. In lieu of pictures, Terri would tell Ryan to close his eyes and imagine—and that’s just what he did.
As Ryan grew up, the handwritten stories were shelved, and they might have remained there for a long time, had a tragic accident not occurred during the summer before Ryan’s sophomore year of high school. At the age of fifteen, the vivacious young man had his life cut short after suffering severe head trauma.
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Now, three years after the loss of her only child, Terri dusted off those old pages and turned them into a children’s book that she hopes will serve as a legacy to Ryan. The book, Do Spiders Need Leggins When it’s Cold Outside? (Brandylane Publishers 2009) is a hardcover compilation of four different stories, complete with whimsical illustrations by Terri’s friend and Virginia artist Buttons Boggs. Each story is an imaginative spin-off of questions and scenarios dreamed up by Ryan as a small boy. The curious inquiry, “How do spiders keep their legs warm when it’s cold outside?” was the one that started it all.
The first two stories, Terri explains, “Are about stalling, not wanting to go to bed. The third one is about passing the blame, saying ‘It wasn’t me!’ And the fourth one is about asking questions.” Sounds simple enough, but the result is a colorful world of polka-dot cats and tree-climbing elephants, where you might find alligators in your bed or have your hat stomped on by the pirate that lives in your shoe.
Such an imaginative legacy is fitting for a boy like Ryan; Terri says:
“When he was a baby, he would try to unscrew light bulbs to see the filaments inside. He was constantly on the go, always inquisitive, very active. Most of the time he’d drive my friends crazy because he’d talk so much, but we’d take lots of trips together on the weekends, just the two of us, and just explore, and he’d ask so many questions. I think that’s what made him so smart.”
As he grew older, this bubbling curiosity matured into a zest for life and new experiences that made Ryan popular with his peers. Those who knew him describe him as a compassionate boy who never complained. “He was afraid that getting straight As, people would think he was a nerd,” Terri recalls, “but it didn’t really work out that way. People really emulated him.” To this day, his friends still leave him messages on his MySpace page.
A charming children’s book added to all of those warm memories makes up quite a legacy for a boy who, in Terri’s words, “did more in his fifteen-and-a-half years than most people do in a lifetime;” but this isn’t all Ryan gave to the world when he left it. A single page in the back of Terri’s book makes reader’s aware of “Ryan’s gifts”: the five lives he saved by being an organ donor.
Through her grief when she learned that her son was dying, a lucid thought shone: “Could Ryan be an organ donor?” Terri asked the doctors. The answer was yes, and five Virginia residents found their futures given back to them in one night. “It made a little bit of sense,” Terri says of her decision, “making something positive out of something so horrible.” In the years since, she has become much more passionate about organ donation, something she gave little thought to before Ryan’s accident. She has attended a medical seminar and driver’s education classes to speak on the subject, and hopes that her book will help raise awareness about organ donation.
Following Ryan’s death, LifeNet (an organization that coordinates organ donation) told Terri where Ryan’s organs went, and she has since met with the man who received his heart. Terri describes the experience as “surreal.” “There’s no preparing yourself for it,” she says. “It was very strange…but I did get to hear my son’s heart beating in his body, which makes me feel that he’s still here in some way.”
And in many ways he is, be it in a heartbeat, or in the memories of his friends, or in the bedtime stories that he and Terri now share with the children who will grow up reading Do Spiders Need Leggins When it’s Cold Outside? Referencing the illustrations of the pirate in her book, Terri intimates, “You can’t tell, but the pirate’s face is actually Ryan’s face. I gave [Buttons] pictures of Ryan and she took it from there.”
A retired schoolteacher, Terri now lives deep in the woods of New Kent with her husband and dogs in a log cabin that Ryan helped them build. She continues to educate others about organ donation, and hopes to become a volunteer speaker for LifeNet and to train to help others dealing with the loss of a child. On a cord around her neck she wears a little glass bottle given to her by the hospital where Ryan died. Inside is a miniaturized printout of Ryan’s last heartbeat, before his heart moved on to someone else. The EKG reading hangs close to Terri’s own heart when she talks about publishing her book. “I wanted it done so he’ll be remembered,” she says. “I don’t ever want his memory to fade out.” pl
To order a copy of Do Spiders Need Leggins When It's Cold Outside? visit Brandylane Publishers.
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