The Sharp End of Life. Dierdre Wolownick
pointed out. And Alex did just that, unknowingly and unintentionally, everywhere we went. Any wall, any tree, any apparently featureless vertical structure was home to Alex. In a few seconds, he’d be on top—the professional in him already making the dangerous and difficult look simple and attainable—as, over and over, the other boys or girls would attempt to follow. He would gladly have shared the fun with someone else, but the effect of his effortless athleticism was just as devastating as an intentional put-down.
The other kids fell. They got hurt. Frustrated. They cried. Some called Alex names. And I suspect the mothers wanted to as well. Eventually, the mothers at the playground began to recognize us. When we arrived, they’d call their little boys for snack time, or it would suddenly be time to go feed the ducks. Anything but follow that crazy little boy with the even crazier mother who let him climb places where no little boy should go.
“That’s so dangerous!” one mother hissed at me as she ran to rescue her son from Alex’s bad influence. “Can’t you control your son?”
Control him? Her words stopped me in my tracks. Was I a bad mother? What Alex was up to did seem dangerous. From the other mother’s perspective—a person with a normal fear of high places or of falling—he was a bad influence. Kids that small shouldn’t be on the top of the monkey bars, hanging by one hand. Or up on the highest branch of the biggest tree. Or standing on the top edge of the eight-foot-high brick wall surrounding the water-control machinery at the local creekside park.
But he wasn’t reckless, or a daredevil, as that mother assumed. He was training himself to recognize fear for what it was: a warning. For her, for the other kids, that warning kicked in sooner than it did for Alex. He was training himself to evaluate the warning, and if he considered himself safe, up he’d go. The other kids probably never did that. Their own fears, and lack of physical skill, stopped them from following him.
It reminded me of my summers at the beach. Before I got in the ocean, I would stand and watch the waves for a while. If they were crashing, breaking hard, I would gauge my fear level. Could I get in without getting hurt? Would I be able to get back out without being upended or scraped along the rough bottom? If everyone else seemed to be having fun, why did I hesitate?
Everyone’s fear threshold is different. And, of course, as Alex’s mother, I tried—constantly—to rein him in. But it was always clear that he was different. By two and a half years old, wearing a helmet way too big for his little body, he could already ride his tiny yellow two-wheeler around the quiet court we lived on. He never needed training wheels. On our big swing set in the backyard, he would stand on a swing, launch himself through the air—what climbers call a “dyno,” I now know—grab a cross bar, and then climb up the thick metal pillars, or feet, of the whole swing set. His sister would calmly swing, giving him lots of space as she watched.
The activities changed as he grew, but the goal always seemed the same: to get higher. A tree, a wall, a building, everything in his world was a means to get higher. As the three of us walked through the big park in our neighborhood, a constant litany went something like this:
“Alex, don’t go up there!”
“Why, Mom? It’s really easy.”
Or:
“Alex, get down from there!”
“Why?” Or just, “I’m fine, Mom.”
And he was. But that never stopped him from negotiating with me. By the time he was five, we had moved into a one-story ranch-style house. Alex started asking me if he could go on top of the roof. But he was little, and I still thought like a mom, so I always said no. This went on for several years. One day, when Alex was about eight or nine, I heard crunching sounds overhead from inside my kitchen. I ran outside and looked up. Caught in the act, Alex smiled his irresistible smile and chatted with me as though we did this every day. He told me all about his adventure, how easy it was to get up there, what he’d found, how he could see the whole neighborhood . . . I couldn’t recall the last time I’d seen him this animated, this enthusiastic—this happy. I complained, of course, and demanded he come down. But while we negotiated, he was walking back and forth, pulling debris out of the gutters that ran the length of the whole roof. He pulled out a tennis ball, other toys and leaves and gunk. He looked completely at ease, more than I knew I would ever feel, up there. He was at home.
I had lost this round. I knew that if I forbade him from climbing on the roof, he would just go up there whenever I wasn’t home. So I did the only logical thing: I asked him to clean out all the gutters anytime he climbed up on the roof. A win-win finale.
I always talked with my children as adult to adult. With respect. The way I’d always wished grown-ups had talked with me when I was little. I had learned a lot about parenting—especially what not to do—from observing my parents, and my own children benefited from this. This scene would have ended differently if my parents had been in charge. They would have yelled until Alex came down, probably smacked him, punished him, and forbidden any more ascents.
But I’d lived with this child enough years to know that nothing would stop him from getting higher, any way he could. Beyond that, I knew that he could argue longer than most adults could stand: about chores, clothes, food, homework, or any other life obligation. He often out-argued his father, who would just give up in disgust and walk away. Alex and I, however, were well-matched in stubbornness. When I thought it really mattered, I could out-explain, out-argue, out-detail my son until he very grudgingly complied with whatever stupid rule we were talking about.
But I picked my battles carefully. I’d seen how comfortable he was up on the roof. Nothing good would come of trying to forbid it.
But I did forbid—absolutely, completely, unequivocally—another request a year or so later. There was a pool a few feet behind our ranch-style house, and just beyond the pool, in the corner of the property, sat a wooden play structure, like a frontier fort. Both kids thought it would be great fun to string a rope from the chimney of the house, over the pool, to the wooden structure. Once that was in place, they could slide down the rope from the roof and jump off into the pool. That one was a simple “no.” They both brought it up often, with Alex the most intent on it, but it was always a firm “no.” They never did go up the chimney or string the rope across the pool.
“CAN’T YOU CONTROL YOUR son?”
That mother’s question, that day in the playground, was off target. It wasn’t about control, at least not mine. The force that drove Alex upward controlled him—I suspect it always will—and he knew how to control the fear that came with it. It never entered his mind that other kids might be too afraid to go where he went, or wouldn’t be physically able to. He knew where he was going, and he knew he could get there—and back.
I didn’t have most of this figured out at first. Back then, my stomach lived in a constant state of tension. I was always poised, ready to jump, to catch, to intervene. But I rarely had to.
I learned that first from Sit ’n Spin, a toy the kids had when they were small. It seemed simple and safe—kids sit on a plastic bobbin-shaped thing, wrapping their little legs around the center. Turning the top ring spins the toy around, like on the teacups at Disneyland, until they get dizzy or fall off onto the floor, laughing.
That was not nearly adventurous enough for Alex. He would place it near a wall or a piece of furniture and stand on the top circle—sending visiting adults into a tizzy. Then he’d push against the wall, making the toy, and him, spin around. Faster and faster he’d spin, until he reached escape velocity. Then he’d launch.
The top of the recliner, side of the piano, countertop—it was all fair game for a leap and a try at a handhold. If he missed, he’d fall on the floor, laugh, ignore the adults desperately lunging to catch him—and pick himself up and try again.
That was his cycle: launch, laugh, repeat. Fortunately, his impish smile was irresistible to the adults around him. And his laughter soothed the most terrified scream whenever the closest adults leapt