Friday, December 14, 2007
Mom takes 2
Aaron McFarling
Recent columns
BLACKSBURG -- Eddie Royal knew something was wrong the moment he stepped out of the tunnel and into the chants.
"Eddie! Eddie!"
He looked around. Nothing.
"Eddie! Eddie!"
Where was she?
"Eddie! Eddie!"
She's not here.
It was so strange. There were 65,000 people at Lane Stadium to greet Royal on Senior Day, there to celebrate four years of receiving excellence at Virginia Tech, but the one person who mattered most to him -- his mother, Pearl -- hadn't made it.
Or maybe she had, but she wasn't on the field. That's all he knew.
"I was in shock," Eddie Royal recalled Tuesday, almost a month after it happened. "You run out and expect to see your family -- and no one's there. It's not a good feeling. It's something you don't want to remember. It's something you can probably look back at and laugh at, but at that moment in time, it wasn't funny."
Up in the stands, friends of Pearl Royal noticed she wasn't out there. This was so unlike her! they thought. Several of them picked up their cellphones and started punching in text messages:
"How could you?"
"You know you should be out there!"
"Why would you do this to Eddie?"
Royal wondered the same thing as he trotted out on the field. Lost and confused, he spotted the mother of Tech receiver Josh Morgan. He awkwardly gave her a hug.
That would have to do.
"There are no excuses, Mom."
Pearl Royal remembers how often her son would tell her that. Eddie Royal would be running a fever, and he would insist on going to high school football practice anyway.
"I've got to go, Mom," Royal would say.
"Just explain to the coach that you're sick," she would tell him.
"There are no excuses, Mom."
This is how their relationship has always worked: She teaches him things, and he does the same. Pearl Royal taught her son to work hard in school, to keep his grades up, to care about more than just football. Eddie Royal taught his mother about toughing it out.
This is why Nov. 17 still eats at Pearl Royal. How can she explain to her son what happened when she still doesn't understand it herself? Besides, there may be a reason she wasn't on that field, but there are no excuses.
"I don't know why it happened, but it happened for a reason -- one that I might never understand," she said. "I can't forgive myself for that, for some reason. I just can't."
Eddie Royal flashes that familiar smile.
"Tell her I already forgave her," he said. "Tell her she doesn't need to tell me the story. It's OK. I don't know if I even want to hear it anymore."
And that's the strangest part of this story: On Tuesday, more than three weeks after that game, Pearl Royal still hadn't given her son an explanation.
"I heard a couple [of] different stories," he said. "I still don't really know the truth. I'm hoping she tells you, because she hasn't told me yet. I heard they got to the gate, and somebody wouldn't let them in. I heard they just arrived late. So the story's really ... I don't know."
It's not like these two are constantly feuding or estranged. Royal calls his mother "my best friend in the world." Pearl Royal still refers to her son as "my baby." They can -- and do -- talk about almost anything.
So why wouldn't she just tell him?
"I don't know," he said. "She beats around the bush."
Here's why she won't tell him: A story is not sufficient. For a mother like Pearl Royal, who strives to please everybody, atoning for something like this requires more than words.
"Pearl's the best," said Tech quarterback Sean Glennon, a former high school teammate of Eddie Royal's and good friend of the Royal family. "She's your classic big ol' lovin' mama, just looking after her boy. She's a single parent. She could be serving Eddie some soup on those Campbell's Soup commercials someday like Donovan McNabb's mom."
Pearl Royal laughed when she heard that. She had a little "Mama McNabb" in her during all those old pee-wee football games.
"When Eddie made a touchdown, I made it, too, because I was running right down the sideline with him," she said, chuckling. "People would say, 'I don't know who had the ball -- you or him.' "
OK, so here's the Nov. 17 story as Pearl Royal tells it: It had been a hectic morning and early afternoon by the time she, her son Chris and his fiancee got on the road. They were on pace to make it to the check-in point by 3 p.m., the designated time for families. But just before they reached the turn for Southgate Drive, another car cut them off, ran them off the road and nearly down an embankment.
Everybody was fine, but it rattled Pearl Royal. It set them back a bit.
So after they parked on campus, instead of going all the way to the family check-in point at the Jamerson Athletic Center, she tried to get in more quickly through one of the fan gates close to the parking lot.
This took time. The security guard was busy taking tickets, and, while he wanted to help, he couldn't immediately escort her down. She insisted. She began to panic. She pulled out her ID to prove she was Royal's mom.
Then she heard it -- the first name being called in the senior ceremony.
"I said, 'Oh, my God! We don't have any more time. I've got to go!' " she recalled. "It seemed like things just started turning then. I held onto the fence. That's all I remember. I remember the first name and clenching the fence. Nothing more after that."
When she woke up, the game had already started. Stadium medical personnel told her she had fainted.
"If I could melt, I would have," she said. "I didn't want to be there anymore."
Officials escorted her to her seat midway through the first quarter, but she couldn't concentrate on the game.
The text messages on her phone made her want to cry.
If only she could get up to the PA announcer and persuade him to say something.
"Eddie Royal!" the announcer would say. "Your mother loves you!"
No, she thought. They would never go for that.
Today, Eddie Royal graduates from Virginia Tech.
"Tell her she'd better be there," he joked.
Oh, she will be. In fact, Pearl Royal made arrangements to be at her son's place Thursday night so they could go to the ceremony together this morning. No traffic problems. No admission issues. No melting.
As bright as Royal is, school hasn't always been the top priority for him. He nearly didn't qualify academically for the NCAA when he was in high school, but he crammed in a bunch of extra credit in the final few weeks of his senior year to narrowly avoid prep school.
He will leave Tech with a 2.9 grade-point average and a degree in liberal arts and human sciences.
Royal credits his mother for this.
"I feel like I've pushed myself for her just because I know how happy it makes her," he said. "It's weird that she's more happy about my academic accomplishments than anything I ever do on the field. That's what really motivates me."
Pearl Royal has her own motivation.
That's why today, after the ceremony, she plans to sneak her son down to Lane Stadium. She will ask him to wear his football jersey. Then she will walk out to the 20-yard line.
The rest of the family will be there, too, and they will bring their cameras.
"Eddie! Eddie!"
Eddie Royal will come out of the tunnel. Cameras will click. Pearl Royal and her son will see each other immediately. They will smile, hug, laugh, joke, forgive, forget.
Call it Senior Day, take 2.
