Author Spotlight
As Senior Caleb Hayden refills water glasses at 801 Chophouse, he can’t stop grinning.
Pouring water in the elegant private dining room with maple-paneled walls isn’t new. But this time is different because of whose glass he’s filling: Christopher Paolini, the 27-year-old author of the critically-acclaimed sci-fi novel “Eragon.”
Caleb knew right away it was the author he idolized because he’d seen the picture of him on the back flap of the novel.
“May I help you?” Paolini says.
“I just wanted to say thank you for writing,” Caleb says, stammering.
Paolini tells Caleb that his view of the world inspired him to start writing. He explains that he feels an energy around him when he looks around and that’s magic in itself.
Caleb tells Paolini that the people in his life are his muse.
He leaves to go give water to the rest of the restaurant, but then comes back to give the dining room party one more refill. As Paolini pays his bill, he hands a business card to Caleb. It is for his editor at the publishing company Alfred A. Knopf.
“If you really want to get into writing, then give this man a call,” he says.
***
Waiting tables has been a part of Caleb’s life since he was 6-years-old. Caleb often visited his parents, Elizabeth and Christopher Hayden, while they worked at the Classic Cup. He grew to love the energy of restaurants and the bonds between people that were made there. He spent countless hours sitting at a table folding napkins with his dad or in the back with the cooks, sometimes getting to add a pinch of spices or a bit of olive oil to a dish.
Caleb enjoyed the routine of going to restaurants, but that same routine also meant time away from his parents. His mom often worked during the day; his dad, all through the night.
When Elizabeth got home she would sit and talk with Caleb. When Christopher got home, he would take off one of his two rings for Caleb to spin on his bedside table as he drifted to sleep. The first was Caleb’s grandfather’s silver thumb ring, with a spiral on it and 9:45, the time of his late Uncle Jim’s birth engraved inside. The second was his wedding ring. It was silver, with three diamonds, one to represent each of Christopher’s children at that point; it mesmerized Caleb.
Those daily traditions kept them connected as did their annual ones. Every Halloween, Caleb’s parents would take him, his brother Elijah and sister Isabella trick-or-treating at the Quivira Crossing shopping center. There was a Haunted House and all the stores gave out candy. The Haydens would trick-or-treat, then stop for dinner at the Hometown Buffet. When Caleb was 9-years-old, the night went like usual. As they take their seats to eat, his parents are silent. Caleb glimpses his dad’s left hand and the familiar three stones aren’t there. This is the first time he knows they’re getting a divorce.
A few days later Caleb wrote about that night. He doesn’t know exactly what he wrote, but he remembers how he felt.
“It was one of those venting things, where you don’t really think about it, you just write,” Caleb said.
***
Caleb’s first poem was titled “Fire.” In the seventh grade at St. Agnes, he was given an assignment to write a poem using as many adjectives as possible. After reading through dictionaries, he settled on writing about the cycle of fire.
“When I read about embers they were described as a lightening and darkening,” Caleb said. “I saw an affiliation between fire and life. The way that embers burn up and past embers light new fires.”
Caleb was drawn to the descriptions. He remembers seeing a connection between the changing embers in poem and the way his life was still changing after his parents’ divorce.
Since his mom initiated the divorce, Caleb focused his anger on her. Now Caleb says he knows that their communication had broken down from both sides and he sympathizes with his mom’s choice.
But at the time, all his tension was aimed at his mom. During one fight, Caleb shattered a tile floor by stomping on it, during another, he punched a hole in a door.
“When we did split, all the kids saw was that I left,” Elizabeth said. “That I walked away from their Dad. But I think he fought against me because I changed everything he knew.”
After the divorce, Caleb felt like he needed to be a father figure for his Elijah and Isabella. To him, this meant listening to them, helping them with their homework, and sometimes, protecting them.
When Isabella was 8-years-old, she came home from St. Agnes one afternoon with a cut on her face. Caleb saw it and asked what happened. After she told him a kid on the playground threw a stick at her, Caleb was furious. He ran down the street to the school, found the kid, picked him up and screamed, “Never hit my baby sister again or . . .” But the rest of what he said is a blur because then teachers, parents and the principal came out and stopped him.
Caleb also began to feel protective of Elijah, who is four years younger than him. Elijah is mildly autistic and he sometimes doesn’t understand why people are mean to him. Caleb tries to explain that they don’t matter; what they think of him doesn’t matter because he has his family.
***
A now doodle-covered journal with a once-white cover taped to the bottom of a stereo houses Caleb’s “dead” poems. The ones where he was writing and “the music just stopped.” One of these is about a falling star. He’d described the glowing descent, but couldn’t bring himself to write about the crash when it met the Earth. He didn’t want to write about something that sad.
There are three novels that Caleb won’t stop working on. He works on them in spurts. Sometimes going weeks without touching them; sometimes writing for hours on end. The first “Through Lycan Eyes” details the lives of a family of werewolves and their struggles in society.
The second is a sci-fi novel about electric powered rollerblades and families that come together to ride them.
The third is the novel Caleb has been sending to a publisher at Knopf, an untitled fiction conspiracy novel about four brothers. They’re all successful; one a doctor, one a lawyer, one an engineer and one a writer. The writer gets thrown in jail for writing an article exposing what seems to be a conspiracy between the U.S. government and business interests, hurting soldiers in Afghanistan. The other three brothers band together to get him out of jail and let the truth be known.
Elizabeth said in this novel particularly she sees how Caleb’s perspective has become more inclusive of others’ motives as he’s grown.
“He can look at more than just his side, he can look at all sides,” Elizabeth said. “If there’s five people involved, he can look at the five different sides and see that each person brings their own entity into it. They each have their own reasons, their own rationale.”
Every novel Caleb is working on has a common thread: family. The Lycan’s family protects each other, the futuristic family must work together, and the four brothers have a common goal. Though his family life has not often been stable, family means everything to him. And for him, friends, can be family too.
He has two friends, Kyla and Matt, who he lets edit his work. Matt will point out portions that need reworking or plot problems. Kyla focuses in on smaller pieces like word choice.
He trusts them to be honest because he knows them so well. Caleb said he tends to forge close relationships because he wants his connections with people to be strong.
“I don’t want to be like my parents,” Caleb said. “I don’t want there to be one fight that ruins an entire relationship. I want us to be close enough so that one fight will just be a speed-bump.”
***
When he was 14-years-old, Caleb found out that writing was part of his family’s past. His dad told him that his grandfather was a writer in addition to being a carpenter, sculptor and architectural photographer. For the Kansas City Star, he wrote a series about buildings that were soon to be demolished. He’d take pictures of each structure and then write their stories—from their functions to what they meant to the community. For The Ladies Home Journal he submitted poetry. For Reader’s Digest, he wrote about his experiences in the Korean War.
According to Christopher, it was a passion Robert passed on to his sons. Christopher’s brother Jim wrote poetry and so has Christopher —all inspired by the people in his life.
***
When Caleb speaks about his Writers’ Workshop class this year, he starts to laugh and smile. That class, he said, helped him expand his writing and try out a new, lighter tone on projects like writing a children’s book about a tiger that bonds with orphans.
Caleb’s writing is brighter now than it once was, mirroring his life. Christopher has a new girlfriend and Caleb thinks they’re good for each other. He sees that she can put him in his place if necessary. He thinks Elizabeth is happier now. She’s a nurse at Shawnee Mission Medical Center and works part-time as a bartender at 801 Chophouse with Caleb.
Right now, Caleb is in the process of revising his novel about the four brothers and sending drafts to an editor at Knopf, who sends them back with suggestions. He knows he has a long way to go before being published, so he hasn’t told his mom about being in contact with the publisher. He worries about getting her hopes up and then letting her down.
Caleb is hesitant to get other people’s hopes tied up in his writing, but he remains optimistic about his chances. He hopes to be published, but he says that he believes writing isn’t only about accomplishment.
“Make it a goal but at the same time don’t let it be your only aim,” Caleb said. “Look around, don’t just look at that one tree, look at the entire forest.”
All photos by Samantha Bartow.
Leave a Reply