Faith to breathe

LaMore Sauls didn't know she was pregnant. Doctors thought she was having issues with her thyroid gland but, to make a long story short, it wasn't a thyroid issue at all. She was in her third trimester no less.

That baby was to be a boy, a boy she would name Bijan.

The name Bijan in itself has its own story worthy of a small digression. LaMore and her mother, Geraldine, were working as fragrance models at a Dillard's in the months after LaMore - now Sauls, then Robinson - found out she was pregnant.

The world around her was chaotic, as people were adjusting to the new reality of a post-9/11 world. LaMore was still young herself, adjusting not just to the chaos of the world around her but the life-changing love that grew within her. Just a college student at the time, LaMore finished that fall semester before returning to her parents' home so they could help her raise her little boy, a boy who got his name from a perfume.

As LaMore and her own mother worked the fragrance counter, one day a Bijan cologne sample was placed before her.

"Bijan -- I like that," she thought to herself.

LaMore ruminated on the name before ultimately deciding that, yes, that would be her firstborn son's name. Funny enough, it was actually after she decided on the name of her baby that she found out what Bijan meant. A colleague of hers was Persian and one day the colleague told her what Bijan stood for in her native language: "Hero."

If the name didn't fit before, LaMore said, it did now. And what's a hero without a miraculous origin story?

A month and a half after LaMore moved back home, Bijan was ready to make his grand entrance into the world. The excitement within the Robinson family was palpable. Geraldine and Cleo were preparing the house for his arrival. LaMore's little sister Cleyrissa, who was nine at the time, was over the moon to meet her nephew. She'd always wanted a little brother and this was the next best thing. And LaMore, though still trying to actively wrap her head around the idea of being a mother, was just so ready to meet this baby who she knew, even then, would change her life.

"Here's going to come my first true love, something that's going to love me unconditionally," LaMore said. "It doesn't matter what I do, this baby loves me, and I need to love it back."

LaMore labored with her bundle of love for 13 hours. At the end of those 13 hours, Bijan had arrived. Doctors and nurses laid Bijan on his mother's chest, but instead of relief quickly came anxiety. Bijan wasn't breathing. The nurses snatched Bijan away and began their work.

Time, LaMore said, slowed down.

"I remember thinking, 'Why is he not crying?'" she said. "I watched too many mommy movies within a three-month time period, so why is he not crying? I know he's supposed to cry."

Crying he wasn't. It was too quiet, even as doctor after doctor started rushing into the delivery room. LaMore remembers the last doctor who came in with the most clarity. She believes this doctor was the one who was designated to give her the news no mother ever wants to hear or could even fathom: You had a stillborn baby.

"Instead of celebrating life, we're getting ready to celebrate a homegoing," LaMore said through misty eyes.

Then, she said, time stopped all together.

"They say time doesn't stop, but that's what it felt like," LaMore said. "I remember the doctors just parting like the Red Sea, and I could see my mom walking over to Bijan, but not knowing why."

To hear LaMore's side of it, Geraldine walked over to her grandson, who had yet to draw his first breath of life, and placed two fingers on his chest.

"I could see him," LaMore said, recalling her position on the delivery table, "and it was like God was breathing life into him."

And then Bijan Robinson cried.

"The doctors were like, 'That's what we were looking for,'" LaMore said. "'We were looking for a miracle.'"

A breathing, crying, healthy Bijan was finally handed to his mother. The anxiety of the last few minutes gave way to profound relief. Like her little boy, LaMore cried, too.

"When they finally handed him to me, that's when I really cried," LaMore said. "It was like, 'OK. Here he is. He's OK.'"

Her little Bijan, her little hero, experienced his first miracle.

It should be noted that the Robinson family's faith is integral to their story and to Bijan's story.

"God gave him breath to breathe," Geraldine said. "We're talking about a baby who was born not breathing. To look at him now, every touchdown he scores I am screaming, 'That's my grandson!'"

Once Bijan was here, his family says he never stopped moving. To make up for those moments of terrifying silence, Bijan came with extra energy, LaMore said through a smile.

It was this energy, positive in nature and wrapped in faith, that has propelled Bijan through life.

Family to love

LaMore doesn't know where she and Bijan would be without their family. She doesn't know because she never had to wonder. For every step of Bijan's journey, his family has been walking beside them.

Cleo fostered Bijan's curiosity for the game, even when he didn't realize he was doing so.

"I was an outlet for him to ask questions," Cleo said.

After Cleo worked a football game, he liked to go back and watch film. But he was never alone when he turned the tape on.

"Bijan would watch it, also," Cleo recalled. "I was watching my part in it, but he's watching everything else, what's going on out there on the field and the plays."

LaMore said her father's relationship with her son is one of the most beautiful connections she's ever witnessed. It was and still is beautiful, even as she laughs that the two of them together can be a lot to handle, like when they would insist upon throwing a football up and down the aisles of grocery stores and Walmarts. As Bijan grew, the connection with Cleo meant more and more.

"In the adolescent years, as Bijan [was] getting older, it was great to have my father there," LaMore said. "There was never anything lacking for Bijan. You would have never known that there wasn't a biological father there because we were such a close family. I think he thought this is all how it's supposed to go down. It was good times. It really was, and it still is."

But it wasn't just Cleo. Oh, no. With Cleo came Geraldine. She fostered Bijan's imagination to dream and his basis of faith. It was her pots and pans that Bijan would bring out to use as stand-in drums, his foundational learning before he became their church's drummer. Geraldine could also be considered the spiritual head of the family, having been Bijan's Sunday school teacher growing up.

Then there's Bijan's auntie, Cleyrissa Robinson, who has fostered Bijan's off-field career.

Cleyrissa is Bijan's manager and certified best friend. They grew up together -- he'd steal her shoes; she now steals his t-shirts – with Cleyrissa less than a decade older than Bijan. They go to concerts together and, with NIL deals and promotions knocking on Bijan's door in college at Texas, it was Cleyrissa who helped market Bijan in the right way.

If you want to get to Bijan, you must go through Cleyrissa, who has dedicated her life to her nephew and his goals, which have lined up with her own.

"I've always known my purpose was attached to this in some way, with me wanting to advocate for young, Black men, specifically," Cleyrissa said. "I always knew my purpose was attached to that, I just didn't know how or where or when. (Bijan) opened the door to my purpose. That is something that I don't take lightly."

Beside Bijan stands his family, a family that is even bigger than the four mentioned in this story. Through every corner of who Bijan is you see their impact on him. You see their fingerprints. You see his mother's love, his grandmother's encouragement, his aunt's savvy and his grandfather's influence.

You see that his purpose is theirs, in love, in passion and in life's biggest moments.

"His dreams coming true is my favorite part of all of this," Cleyrissa said after Bijan was drafted. "The minutes I see him so excited about something he's accomplished, or the minute I read an article that really, truly depicts him in the truest, most genuine way of who he is, that is what I want. I want the world to experience the Bijan that we -- his family -- know he is. That's where he has the truest impact."

Football to dream

Most kids have a security blanket when they're younger, perhaps a stuffed animal or an imaginary friend to keep them company.

Not Bijan Robinson. He had a football.

And he carried it around everywhere. When his mother took him to get his first haircut, he had it. Whenever they saw him walking around the house, he had it. When the family went to church every Sunday morning, you guessed it, a football was right there in his hands when he loaded up into the car.

It got to the point where rules were made for said football. Bijan could bring it with him to church, but it had to stay in the car during the service. So, when the congregation was dismissed, Bijan would run up to his grandfather or his mother asking them for the keys to the car so he could go get the ball.

Sometimes he'd play with some of the other kids in the church parking lot, but there were a number of times when Bijan couldn't find kids to play with. Kids were around but, according to Cleo, the kids didn't really want to play with Bijan for fear of the consequences.

"He was so physical with them," Cleo said between laughs. "They used to have those jumping castles, too, and the other kids would not go in that castle with Bijan. When he jumps, he's bouncing not just on his own, he's bouncing into somebody. He wanted that physical contact. Even at home, he'd be like, 'Come tackle me!'"

One day, though, the football ended up making its way into the church, which probably would have been fine if it was never seen. It was seen, though, by the entire congregation.

Midway through the pastor's sermon, the football -- Bijan's football -- began rolling down the aisle. The preacher was preaching, LaMore said, and that ball was just rolling along.

"My mom, if you could have seen her face," LaMore said with a laugh. "Like, boy! He knew he was in trouble."

After the service, Bijan was getting a stern talking to when the pastor walked up to the Robinson family.

"Leave that boy alone," LaMore recalls the pastor saying behind a smile. "It's embedded in him."

The "it" the pastor was referring to was obvious: the game of football.

"Football, it was in him," LaMore said, looking back at the memory. "I think it goes beyond what he saw my dad do (as an official). It was in him. All we did was we helped [cultivate] the gift."

The Robinsons put Bijan in a flag football league. The story goes that he scored his first touchdown… and perhaps even his second touchdown… for the wrong team. He was handed the ball and ran in the opposite direction. He confused the screams for cheers of greatness instead of what they truly were, which was a sideline of people telling him he was running the wrong way.

"The good news is he finally figured it out," Cleo said, "and he's done a good job running the right way and scoring the right way ever since."

Bijan's game evolved as he did, and it didn't take long for those beyond the confines of his family to take notice. When Cleo finally allowed Bijan to play tackle football, the joke around town was that Bijan was the only kid in Tucson who played for five Pop Warner teams (one of which just so happened to be the Tucson Falcons). Always a stickler for wanting to know why he was doing something, Bijan's vision was what set him apart well before football became a reality as a means to a free college education.

"He told his mother, and me, too, that, 'Sometimes I know where I'm going before I even get there,'" Cleo said. "And this is well before he's even in high school. Bijan always knows why he's doing something."

By high school, Bijan's reputation preceded him. Just like in the church parking lot and inside the bounce houses of his childhood, no one wanted to face off against Bijan when he suited up for Salpointe Catholic High School.

"On defense, he would knock the crap out of somebody," Cleo said. "I remember, in practice, he'd knock the crap out of those guys, too."

It got to the point where Cleo felt compelled to bring it to the coach's attention.

"Coach," Cleo remembers saying, "why don't you settle him down some?"

Without hesitation, the coach responded that he wasn't going to do that.

"'He plays at that speed and I'm not going to change that,'" Cleo recalls him saying, before Cleo himself added: "I think it was a good philosophy, but it probably wasn't too good for the other kids."

Bijan has never been a player a coach has had to push to go forward. It's probably one of the reasons the Falcons liked the Texas running back so much. Sure, there was the fact that Bijan was the first player in Longhorn history to surpass 1,500 rushing yards and the 300 receiving yards in a single season, but it was his motor that caught the Falcons eye. It's a motor they like to work with.

Falcons head coach Arthur Smith says frequently he'd rather have to pull someone back than push someone forward. Kyle Smith, the Falcons vice president of player personnel, has said on a few occasions the Falcons are looking for self-starters. Bijan has fallen into both of these buckets for much of his life, a life that has now brought him to Atlanta.

"It wasn't so much what I saw him do on the football field, but it was his mentals. It was a dream," Geraldine said of what made her grandson stand out. "It was his commitment to the dream and it was his determination."

Geraldine loves stockings at Christmas. One year she stuffed the stockings with these big Post-it notes. Bijan loved the little gift and wrote down notes that covered his walls and the outside of his room. At about nine or 10 years old, Geraldine recalls that he used the Post-it notes to highlight what was important to him: Family, God and scripture, school and - of course - football.

More than a decade ago, Bijan wrote on a Post-it note: "God, take me to the NFL."

"First round," he added, too.

On another, he wrote: "At the end of the day, make me special."

Already living within his purpose of faith, family and football, Geraldine said she knew right then that, special? Yeah, "he's going to be just that," she said.

But how did she know? How did the other characters in this story know? Well, it's because they know Bijan, and that's enough to believe in him and his purpose.

"I knew if Bijan set his mind to do something," Geraldine said, "he was going to do whatever it took to make it happen."