The Sharp End of Life. Dierdre Wolownick
Our first one had. Our second just couldn’t bring himself to shut down for the night. Life was too interesting.
Often, his body decided for him. Alex would fall asleep standing, leaning against the wall and clutching Blue Blankie, at ten, eleven, or even later. Charlie and I were ready for bed by seven or eight at night.
But every day, no matter when he had fallen asleep the night before, he was up at four thirty or five, his large, dark eyes brimming with adventure. Time to get active and vertical.
Every day.
In an effort to survive such a regimen, we would leave a tiny plastic bowl of dry cereal on the kitchen table before going to sleep ourselves. Maybe, if we were lucky, he’d feed himself breakfast in the morning and play by himself for a few minutes before pouncing on one of us to “go play.”
He couldn’t walk yet and never slowed down enough to bother talking. But he could travel. Months prior, I’d given up hope of finding him where I’d put him down. Books call it “cruising,” when babies who can’t walk get around by holding onto objects within reach.
But “within reach” refers to a normal, earthbound baby. For Alex, cruising was a cinch, whether it was horizontal (what most babies do) or vertical (garage shelves, closet partitions, towel racks, open drawers, etc.).
The morning I learned our baby could walk, I stumbled out of bed at five thirty. Unusually late. No one had woken me. It was already getting light. I dashed into Alex’s room. Gone. He wasn’t in the kitchen, and neither was his bowl, which meant he was already fueled up and doing some high-octane cruising.
Ten months old. Where could he go? I checked the top of the refrigerator and of all the furniture. Inside every cabinet, low or high. The shelves above the washing machine and the garage door that led to the backyard outside. All the places I’d found him before. The patio sliding glass door was out of the question—it had a heavy steel frame and an uneven, rusted track filled with debris, making it difficult for even adults to open.
My breathing got faster and shallower. He wasn’t inside, climbing any shower curtains or rods, or hanging from any towel bars. Or closet poles. It was warm enough for him to go outside. The neighborhood was still asleep, so if he cried, or knocked over the garbage pails or anything else, I’d hear it.
Dead silence.
My palms were sweating now, my heart pounding. Ten months old. Not walking. Where could he be?
The front door was heavy wood with a regular doorknob, and it was pretty high for a baby. I unlocked it—a pretty good clue that he hadn’t gone out that way—but, desperate and not thinking clearly, I ran out front into the quiet court. No traffic, no baby. I ran to the corner. No tiny body anywhere.
Ten months old! Could someone have come in and abducted him? (That’s how frantic mothers think.) Charlie was away at a conference, the neighbors were all still asleep—it was just the kids and me. I was alone.
Before calling the police, I convinced myself to calm down and check everywhere one more time. Just in case. I ran everywhere I could think of, checked everything again. Wore out my last reserves. He wasn’t there. I was shaking by now. Someone had taken my baby!
As I picked up the phone, there was one last nagging thought: the patio door. It was ridiculous, really. I had trouble with the old, rusted door myself and needed both hands to drag it open.
I put down the phone and looked out into the big backyard. At the far end sat the brand-new swing set that Charlie had just put together. And there, on top of the six-foot-high slide, stood Alex.
All mothers have those memories that stand out, the ones we can’t forget no matter how hard we try. This is one of mine: my ten-monthold baby in his fleece sleeper, standing six feet high in the air, clutching Blue Blankie and looking calmly over the fences into all the other yards. Surveying the neighborhood. No doubt checking to see if there was anything worth climbing.
I ignored my pounding heart and raced out the patio door, which opened with just a flick of my adrenalin-enhanced wrist. I didn’t stop to think about what it all meant—not only had Alex gotten the monster door open, he’d closed it behind himself. Then, while I was running out, he climbed back down and began walking (he was walking now!) back toward the house.
I knew then that life with Alex was going to put me to the test.
This, on top of the other bewildering test I faced every day. I wondered whether I could stay sane long enough to raise my children. Alone.
BRINGING UP MY CHILDREN in West Sacramento was like bringing them up in a ghost town. I worked many jobs when they were little, but while Charlie was at work, or away, I was a stay-at-home, work-at-home mom. My kids and I often walked or biked the mile to the playground, usually without seeing another person. We passed many stray dogs and cats, an occasional duck or two near the pond, but seldom another human being.
All the other kids in the neighborhood went to daycare, so most days Stasia and Alex had only each other to play with. Despite his nonstop physicality and her quiet, thoughtful demeanor, they spent hours together exploring their world. Stasia continued to take her job as big sister very seriously. When they went off on an adventure in our large backyard, she usually held her baby brother’s hand. If they were whirling or swinging or twirling, or if Alex was climbing atop the swing set or on some other structure, she was always nearby, alert, giving him space but always there to protect him. In almost all of our photos from that time, Alex is on the go and Stasia is either watching him carefully from a safe distance or holding his hand.
She also served as his interpreter. For the first few years of his life, Alex never bothered to slow down enough to put words together. The three of us often sang songs—in a variety of languages—and I spoke only French with them. Humming these melodies was easier for him than forming a sentence so, when he wanted to communicate something, he would hum the melody of whichever song fit the need. If he wanted his little fleece lamb, he would hum “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” If it wasn’t forthcoming, he would hum louder. If he saw the moon and wanted to show someone, he would point and hum “Au Clair de la Lune” (lune is moon in French). For his stuffed kitten, he would hum “Ah, Ah, Kotky Dwa” (“Two Little Kittens” in Polish). And so on. Only the three of us knew all of our songs—and languages—so when he hummed a need to Grammie, Grampie, Aunt Carol, or anyone else, Stasia was always ready to interpret for him. They were an inseparable unit.
So we shared a special language at home, in between bouts of non-stop motion, but having another adult to talk to was still the highlight of any day. I regularly took the kids to the playground, weather permitting, and looked forward to it as much as they did. Riding our bikes there—with Stasia on her little red bike and Alex in his seat behind me, or later, all three of us on bikes of varying sizes—was a big adventure. And usually, after we’d been at the playground a while, another mother with a child or two would show up and my kids would have playmates.
That is, until my son became a playground pariah.
The first time it happened, I heard the cries while playing with Stasia in the sandbox. I looked up fast, knowing what Alex was capable of. But he was fine. The other little boy was standing under the monkey bars, pointing up at Alex and wailing.
Had Alex done something terrible? Thrown sand at him? Pushed him off the bars? I took an inventory as I ran over: Alex was high up and climbing, as always, already swinging from the top bar. The other little boy was not holding an injured limb, not rubbing sand out of his eyes, just standing there, looking up, pouring out a heartbroken wail. His mother had come running, too. As I arrived, I heard her trying to soothe her baby’s frustrated feelings.
“I know you want to follow him up there,” she crooned in a soothing mommy-voice, “but you can’t. See? He’s a big boy, he’s much too high for you.”
Trouble was, anybody could see that Alex wasn’t “a big boy.” In fact, he was smaller than most boys his age. Which, of